One of the many joys of geology is gaining sufficient insight into a landscape to enable four-dimensional vision. Instead of seeing just a hill, the insightful geologist sees gently dipping clays and sandstone strata, deposited during a marine highstand, overlain by a series of much more recent conglomeratic terraces, deposited by a river cutting and sculpting a modern valley. Unfortunately, even the most astute and experienced geological observer often cannot interpret a landscape alone without additional information and evidence, for example relating to absolute ages and rates and the way in which geology connects together regionally. This is especially true when the relevant features of the landscape are subtle or partly hidden by modern human activity.

Southern England by Peter Friend will be useful in this context to any amateur or professional geological observer curious about the landscape around her. The book starts with three introductory chapters setting out some current theories of landscape evolution and explaining key tectonic and climatic landscape-shaping processes before moving on through a series of chapters focussing on different areas providing complete coverage of southern England from East Anglia all the way to Devon, and Cornwall in the southwest. Each chapter explains the bedrock geology in terms of age, basic process of formation, and history of tectonic deformation using a combination of stratigraphic column, cross-section and photographs. Having established this foundation, bedrock geology is skilfully linked to landscape morphology via explanations of glacial ice-sheet history, sea-level changes, and the Holocene to modern history of drainage development. This is illustrated with a series of aerial photographs, topographic profiles and maps, some of which make use of geographic information system technology to delineate hill slope and drainage basin geomorphology. The result is an effective, clear and detailed explanation of landscape development that, with only a little bit of effort on behalf of the reader, provides much insight into the geological evolution of southern England.

As an example, the reviewer has been living in west London for the last year and wondering about various aspects of Thames Valley geology as alluded to in the opening paragraph. This book very nicely explains the history of the area, outlining development of the London Basin from Mesozoic to Palaeogene deposition in greenhouse climatic conditions, through Cretaceous and Neogene faulting and down-warping, to ice sheet advance and retreat and the final Pleistocene and Holocene episodes of fluvial terrace formation and down-cutting. All this explanation is achieved with a minimum of technical jargon, while maintaining a balance in the level of detail that is likely to be useful to amateur and professional alike.

In summary this is an excellent book providing much useful geological insight. It will be an invaluable part of a book collection for anybody living in or visiting southern England who has any interest in understanding the four-dimensional landscape around them more fully.