ABSTRACT
It is not an exaggeration to say that it was a shared interest in the question of property that led to Richard Munton and me crossing paths. Lord Northfield’s Committee of Inquiry into the Acquisition and Occupancy of Agricultural Land published its landmark report just months before I began my career as an undergraduate Geography student at UCL (Northfield Committee 1979). Richard’s reputation as an expert on agricultural land market processes and trends (e.g. Munton 1975) had led to his appointment as a special adviser to the Northfield Committee, advising on ‘the role of financial institutions in the farmland market’. But I did not become aware of this until later, when I had moved on to study for an M.Phil. in Planning at the Bartlett School, University College London, and, in the throes of an intellectual fascination with Marxist rent theory, was undertaking research for my Master’s thesis on the role of financial institutions in the ownership of agricultural land. I cannot now recall reliably whether or not Richard and I met to discuss our common enthusiasm for institutional landownership at this point. I think that we did, not least because I attribute to him a number of key contacts in the London headquarters of agricultural land agents such as Savills and Jones Lang Wootton. I cannot imagine who else would have been so well connected in those circles. What is certain is that the first paper I ever had published records my debt to Richard, citing no fewer than three of his papers (Whatmore 1986; Munton 1977, 1984, 1985).
