Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back, reviewed

By Simon Cocking, review of Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back, by Guy Shrubsole. Available to buy here. See more on this website also.

Who owns England?

Behind this simple question lies this country’s oldest and best-kept secret. This is the history of how England’s elite came to own our land, and an inspiring manifesto for how to open up our countryside once more.

This book has been a long time coming. Since 1086, in fact. For centuries, England’s elite have covered up how they got their hands on millions of acres of our land, by constructing walls, burying surveys and more recently, sheltering behind offshore shell companies. But with the dawn of digital mapping and the Freedom of Information Act, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for them to hide.

Trespassing through tightly-guarded country estates, ecologically ravaged grouse moors and empty Mayfair mansions, writer and activist Guy Shrubsole has used these 21st century tools to uncover a wealth of never-before-seen information about the people who own our land, to create the most comprehensive map of land ownership in England that has ever been made public.

From secret military islands to tunnels deep beneath London, Shrubsole unearths truths concealed since the Domesday Book about who is really in charge of this country – at a time when Brexit is meant to be returning sovereignty to the people. Melding history, politics and polemic, he vividly demonstrates how taking control of land ownership is key to tackling everything from the housing crisis to climate change – and even halting the erosion of our very democracy.

It’s time to expose the truth about who owns England – and finally take back our green and pleasant land.

Who Owns England? reviewed

This is a super important, relevant and timely book. Shrubsole also aims to ensure that the same questions are being raised and examined for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland too, England is simply the starting point as it is the place he knows best. Similarly for the Republic of Ireland too, large amounts of this country were shared out by various invading clans when they came to Ireland too.

It is quite shocking to learn how opaque and labyrinthine the landownership of so much of England is. The Crown especially, between various duchies and legacy creations have ensured that much of what they own is never visible for public scrutiny. While also at the same time successive national governments have seemed hellbent on a firesale of valuable areas of nature and beauty, at uneconomic prices, and with no criteria about how the land should be cared for.

Shrubsole asks challenging and difficult questions which we do need to get better and more expansive answers about. At times it must have felt depressing to write this book, and certainly to read it, it helps to put into a wider context the endless government concessions to the gentry and landowners. Thankfully at other times, Shrubsole does offer rays of hope that some aspects of who owns what is becoming less elusive and secretive. There are a few crumbs of hope and with every complete spreadsheet of data that is accidentally disclosed.

You do hope that land reform and ownership can be disassociated from just being tagged as class envy or class warfare, and instead open up a more nuanced conversation. About optimal care for our land, earth, and more equitable distribution of wealth and resources. No one wins if all our land is unproductively tied up in shell companies based in the Caribbean or with sumptuous mansions falling into disrepair, owned by Russian oligarchs or Saudi princes looking for tax write-offs or long term property speculations.

Today my book, 'Who Owns England?', is out in paperback.

You can order it online here: https://t.co/EjyLAlk262

Find out about how the 1% own half the land in England, who the biggest landowners are in the country, and what we can do to take back control… pic.twitter.com/mfx2s5EnYm

— Guy Shrubsole (@guyshrubsole) March 19, 2020

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