In 1957, Madeleine Bunting's father John, a sculptor, signed a 50 year lease on an acre of land in the Hambleton Hills on the North York moors, and built a war memorial chapel. Madeleine traces the history of this particular plot of land, and through this tells the history of Britain, and of her family, and her relationship with her complex father. It's an extraordinary, unclassifiable book, a kind of memoir, but taking in history, natural history, environmentalism, politics, religion etc. As Robert MacFarlane says: "this is a seriously good book..a wonderful excavation of what a 'sense of place' might mean - and of the delusions and fulfilments that landscape can inspire". A tremendously good book for anyone interested in English history and landscape.