Rowe and Williamson's work is the first general account of Hertfordshire's historical landscape since Munby's contribution to the Making of the English Landscape series in 1977. The subject is ripe for revisiting. Hertfordshire is a small county and has no uniquely characteristic landscape. Although it has considerable diversity within its boundaries, the defining features tend to flow over the county borders, and become indistinguishable from neighbouring areas of Essex or Cambridgeshire. The landscape history of the county has also been heavily influenced by its proximity to the capital.

The work describes the Hertfordshire landscape first by area and then by theme. Four main areas are distinguished. The ‘champion region’ is dealt with initially. This thin strip in the north of the county historically had more in common with classic Midland open fields than the ancient, wooded landscape more often associated with Hertfordshire. East Hertfordshire, by contrast, constituted what is described as ‘one of the several versions of “ancient” countryside’ that characterised the county. This area displayed a highly dispersed settlement pattern, with some nucleated villages, but numerous isolated farms and hamlets. Western Hertfordshire encompassed the eastern part of the Chilterns, and in particular the dipslope. This area was cleared and settled somewhat later than the north and the east of the county. The authors show the most striking landscape feature of this area as being the distinctive pattern of co-axial fields. The fourth area, the south, in many ways had the least to offer in terms of natural productivity, but was to be the most transformed by proximity to London. This area also had a co-axial field system of sorts, but the authors find several points of difference between this and the field system in the east.

The remaining chapters are thematic rather than geographic. Hertfordshire was, in most of its areas, a heavily wooded county, and so warrants a chapter describing how it was managed as parkland and coppice, and provided grazing in wooded commons. A chapter on traditional buildings covers the parish churches of the county, as well as the cottages and farmhouses. Turning to great houses and designed landscapes, the authors make the point that Hertfordshire was not a county of large landed estates; rather it contained small gentry estates and villas, without extensive holdings. The reason for this has resonances with the modern property market. Proximity to London forced up prices, especially in the south of the county, and this discouraged large accumulations of land, as well as leading to rapid turnover in ownership, accompanied by rebuilding and restyling.

Hertfordshire is more extensively urbanised and suburbanised than most English counties. The book traces the development of the county's towns over a long period in two chapters. One suggestion that may prove controversial is the assertion that historians have overestimated the extent to which medieval towns were the work of great landowners. The authors suggest, instead, that it was more a case of such lords ‘cashing in’ on spontaneous economic developments. They also suggest that the role of formal planning has been exaggerated, tracing a pattern by which the burgage plots and terminating back lanes may have developed from field strips and headlands. From the late nineteenth to the twentieth centuries, Hertfordshire's story is the development of the garden cities and new towns, and the growth of the suburbs. Suburbanisation saw London workers moving out to southern Hertfordshire, and then the industries that employed them following. The development of the garden cites, of which Letchworth was the first, has great interest given recently announced intentions to build new garden cities in Essex and Buckinghamshire.

This book has much to offer the student of landscape history. A well as an overview of an interesting and varied county, the authors make arguments and draw conclusions that are of wider interest. But the book is also clearly aimed at residents of Hertfordshire who are not necessarily historians, and contains enough explanations of basic landscape history, such as open field agriculture, to make the work accessible. The illustrations deserve particular commendation. As well as photographs, the book contains numerous high-quality maps and diagrams, which do much to illuminate the features of the county.