Abstract

The castle and the landscape: annual lecture to the Society for Landscape Studies, May 1984 David Austin generation, dismissing it as descriptive, narrative Annual lectures, like inaugural or presidential and unanalytical. By contrast, historical geographers, addresses, give licence to any speaker for a great archaeologists and historians have not entirely deal of rather airy philosophising, and what follows abandoned this view of Britain, and now there are will in no way depart from the honourable tradition. signs that some geographers are taking a revived Coming as it does from an archaeologist, however, interest in this approach, albeit in a more analytical the following essay must also contain a fair share of and scientific way. For this Society, the importance it solid reality. When. the theme of the lecture was first attaches to regions is demonstrated by its insistence raised, therefore, the initial thought was to explore, on widespread venues for its annual conferences in a general way, the relationships between that most and the commitment of this annual lecture to highly characteristic monument of the Middle Ages, different centres each year. For that reason, my the castle, and its natural habitat, the landscape second sub-theme is that of region,