STUDIO

The history of Britain in maps

Jeremy Black

MAPS ARE AT ONCE AIDS AND IMAGES, means and messages. They are also part of the fascination of the past and of its ability to help in the shaping of subliminal lessons about the character and extent of national identity. Britain’s cartographic imprint might seem clear. An island realm miniaturised from Christopher Saxton’s county maps of Elizabethan England and Wales to the Ordnance Survey of the present, and clarified by the GPS systems that have replaced the A to Z. Yet, alongside these familiar surveys are those offering differing priorities and suggestions, whether accounts of politics or of poverty, the country as a target to others or as the base for international power. Everything and anything can be and has been “mapped”, from religious sentiment to the distribution of genius,…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022

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