Imagination and the Countryside

IMAGINATION AND THE COUNTRYSIDE
Laurie Taylor discusses how imagination and reality combine to create the environments in which we live.

What happens when our view of the countryside collides with the reality of rural life? In part one of a series exploring how imagination and reality combine to create the environments in which we live,Novelist Joanna Trollope, sociologist Howard Newby and rural ethnographer Martin Phillips discuss the rural idyll. The dream the British have of the countryside is not always borne out by the experience of living there, yet the ideas we hold about the countryside often prompt changes. Martin's research revealed long-term residents complaining of too many village fetes and incomers who are simply too keen to get involved in everything. Joanna Trollope explains what drove her out of the countryside five years ago.