Introduction

This study began from a paradox. The English, a predominantly urban nation are to a remarkable degree obsessed with the ‘rural’. One only has to look at the Country Book Club and the continuing large sale of books of rural memoirs and country life to see this in literary terms. This phenomenon has been analysed to some extent by Raymond Williams, and more recently, Wiener. ¹ Less obvious, but probably more important, is the extent to which cultural images of the rural predominate in areas like advertising. In these the recent (up to about 80 years ago) past becomes a symbol for stability, continuity and purity (especially in food and drink) which is contrasted implicitly with the problems of late twentieth-century Britain. ²