In exploring old ground this interesting and well written book breaks a good deal of new ground. Its author’s purpose is very clearly, even eloquently, set out –

to show how industrial activities have shaped the landscape we see today and the way we perceive it, and to attempt to recreate in the imagination the landscapes of the Industrial Revolution – to reactivate the furnaces, the machines and the steam engines, to repopulate the back-to-back terraces, to set in motion once more the barges, the gin horses and the steam locomotives, to pour caustic solutions into streams and to fill the skies with acrid fumes.

This declaration of intent, which points to action as well as to thought, may be described as the manifesto of the Coalbrookdale School of historians as distinct from the Leicester School, for Dr W G Hoskins, who has done far more than any other single historian to direct attention to