Get into the car sometime and drive out of town. Once you have got past the suburbs, and the industrial estates, and the home-made signs ('Buy British', 'Our Beef With Blair') that mark the transition, you will find yourself in another England, barely inhabited, tranquil, timeless. It is easy to see yourself in this world; its unruffled surface seems to reflect a clearer picture of who you are, free of the distorting pressures of urban life. Perhaps you could move to the country and become that person. There is no obstacle; like the graffiti that used to cover the inner cities, those signs carry a message they do not proclaim: this is wasted space, there is scope for redevelopment. Before long you are looking in estate agents' windows.

LRB 25 January 2001 | PDF Download