You could see the results of that failed campaign, as Shrubsole convincingly does, as the roots of many of our contemporary difficulties – “the housing crisis is a land crisis”. The laundered cash that has poured into London property, much of which lies empty, has been facilitated by a taxation system that largely ignores the productive and commercial value of land. In the shires, there is a radical shortage of building plots and a critical housing problem, while legacy landowners are subsidised to exploit the estates granted to them when the country’s entire population was equal to that of present-day Greater Manchester. The pandemic has reminded us that access to land is critical to our mental and physical wellbeing. Children in particular desperately need wild and interesting places in which they can freely roam. A large body of research, endorsed by the government, suggests that our mental health is greatly enhanced by connection to nature. Yet we are forced to skulk around the edges of our nation, unwelcome anywhere but in a few green cages and places we must pay to enter, while vast estates are reserved for single families to enjoy. Painstakingly researched ... having come to the end of this illuminating and well-argued book it's hard not to feel that it's time for a revolution in the way we manage this green and pleasant land' Melissa Harrison, New Statesman

Shrubsole was born in Newbury, Berkshire [3] and attended St Bartholomew's School. [4] Work [ edit ]

Summary

We also now know that Peel Holdings and its numerous subsidiaries owns at least 1,000 parcels of land across England – not just shopping centres and ports in the north-west, but also a hill in Suffolk, farmland along the Medway and an industrial estate in the Cotswolds. Councils, MPs and residents wanting to keep an eye on what developers and property companies are up to in their area now have a powerful new tool at their disposal. Meghji, Shafik (5 December 2022). "Review: The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole". Geographical . Retrieved 3 August 2023.

If we look at the Wikipedia article for Sir Thomas Grosvenor, 3rd Baronet, the first aristocratic owner of the Grosvenor Estate which passed down to the Duke of Westminster, we find that it was not his ancestral friendships with William the Conqueror which made him rich, but rather inheritance of the Estate from a certain Ms Mary Davies.* Shrubsole, who works as a campaigner for the environmental charity Friends of the Earth, estimates that “a handful of newly moneyed industrialists, oligarchs and City bankers” own around 17% of England. Atlantic Oakwood forests, woodlands variously referred to in Britain as Upland Oakwoods, Atlantic Oakwoods, Western Oakwoods, Temperate Rainforest, Caledonian forest, and colloquially as Celtic Rainforests. [10] His book on the subject was shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize [11] and longlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation. [12]From the Norman conquest, when William the Conqueror divided up the country among his barons, to the enclosure of 6.8 million acres of common land between 1604 and 1914 (“a land grab of criminal proportions”), Shrubsole shows how the land has been systematically stolen from ordinary people: “Today most of us are landless.” The aristocracy and landed gentry still own at least 30% of England and probably far more The headline revelation is that less than one percent of the population literally owns half the country. A tiny number of old aristocratic families still privately own around a third of it, while those who have joined the super-rich more recently own another seventeen percent. Fifteen million proud owner-occupiers of ordinary houses and flats, whose homes are supposedly their castles, together own only five percent of England. This it seems is probably a comparable area to that held by the micro-élite who actually do own castles. Renters, of course, own none.

The list is headed by a large water company, United Utilities, which said that much of its land consisted of areas immediately surrounding its reservoirs. This is an exhaustively researched labour of love, but the argument has a fatal flaw. It’s a book about the extent of ownership in absolute terms (who owns what percentage) but this really isn’t the point. How the trespass movement is battling for a kinder, more inclusive Britain". New Statesman . Retrieved 30 July 2021. Major owners include the Duke of Buccleuch, the Queen, several large grouse moor estates, and the entrepreneur James Dyson. He brings the material alive with examples and anecdotes, beginning with his childhood memories of West Berkshire, an apparently affluent, leafy county, but one riven by divisions by the Greenham Common airbase, and the Newbury bypass. Both spurred iconic protests and both are, in a sense, about land and who owns and controls it. Newbury MP and former environment minister Richard Benyon is also a wealthy landowner.There is an impressive amount of research and information in Who Owns England, presented in an accessible way. Shrubsole gives an insight into the work that he and others have done to unearth this knowledge, and explains what they have been unable to find out. An irrefutable and long overdue call for the enfranchisement of the landless’ Marion Shoard, author of This Land is Our Land Both detective story and historical investigation, Shrubsole’s book is a passionately argued polemic which offers radical, innovative but also practical proposals for transforming how the people of England use and protect the land that they depend on – land which should be “a common treasury for all”. Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review – why this land isn't your land". The Guardian. 28 April 2019 . Retrieved 7 April 2021. Hundreds attend mass trespass for the right to roam". The Argus (Brighton) . Retrieved 26 July 2021.