Why townies view the country through a landscape painter's lens

Last time I mentioned the urge to romanticise rural living. This is not a new phenomenon, wrought from the fevered imaginations of Sunday newspaper columnists. It goes back a little further.

If you travelled back to medieval England, you would be unlikely to find anyone using the word “idyll” - and not just because no one went to school. Life in the country was brutal and unforgiving - and if a land worker decided to take a break for five minutes and go for a walk, they’d probably be stabbed by a passing ne’er-do-well.

Cycle forward a few centuries and we most likely have two men to thank - or blame - for our modern view of rural life: Gainsborough and Constable. Their immaculate landscapes engendered an obsession with rural perfection which fuelled a boom in property development by the wealthy, who paid landscape gardeners (the title is no accident) to make their gardens look, to use the newly coined word, picturesque.

"Plus there's plenty of room to park the Range Rover"

The irony of course is that rural life for the unwealthy was still brutal and unforgiving - and not only were they suffering land enclosures, their land could be wrestled from them to create the grounds of a stately home, so the wife of the landowner could dress up as a shepherdess and walk a lamb around on a lead. Baa humbug, you might say. It’s the age old story of the weak crushed by the strong, immortalised in the folk song The World Turned Upside Down (all together now: “In 1649, to St George’s Hill / A ragged band they called The Diggers came to show the people’s will…”)

But of course, by the 18^th Century, brutal and unforgiving lives were migrating, by steam locomotive and canal boat, to the smoky centres of the industrial revolution. No surprise that the idea of the countryside as a place of health and fulfilling pursuits didn’t die. Urban parks were created so workers could pretend they were walking in a quintessential country landscape. Gothic structures like St Pancras railway station testify to a Victorian obsession with the simple, non industrial medieval world  - the Hollywood version that is.

Very few of the population now work in the conditions experienced by those industrial workers - life expectancy in Bradford in those days was eighteen - but we still carry a collective sense that we are part of the “rat race” (to quote the famous graffito along the A4 in West London “Good morning lemmings”) and that if we opt out our lives will somehow be complete.

"No sorry sir; for hand-whittled wooden spoons you need to go to Hackney"

I wrestle with this one, notwithstanding I’ve just bought a house in the country. For a start, I find industrial landscapes just as picturesque as a Constable greatest hit. Ride on the Epping branch of the Central Line on a sunny wintry morning and as the train crosses the North Circular Road, look to your right and enjoy ribbons of concrete curving left and right towards motorways and dual carriageways, lit from behind by the rising sun. Descend Southwards on the M25 towards the Dartford Crossing and marvel at the bleak architecture of Gravesend and Thurrock. Stand on the site of the original  Royal Mint by Tower Hill and watch the Shard peer over the shoulder of William The Conqueror’s White Tower - London’s oldest and newest buildings snuggling together.

It’s the drama of London’s landscape that I will miss when I become a full time country squire. Right now we can go onto our roof terrace in Putney and see a sweep of urban country from the Wembley arch to Canary Wharf without turning a head (and if I do turn, I’ve got the Crystal Palace TV mast for good measure.)

For all that I have become a rural enthusiast, I am at the same time outraged that so few people seem to want to live in London just at the moment. I’ve lived here for 47 years of my life, and am in no doubt it’s the greatest city in the world. Why does everyone want to leave all of a sudden? (I know, we thought of it first).

But already I don’t really belong here any more. I have a new home, and today some more vegetable seeds arrived ready to be planted (yes, I realise I’m still waiting for last month’s crop to peep out from the soil, but my hairdresser says the same thing happened with his chilli plants, so it may not be my fault). Tomorrow it’s back down the A303 so Helen can lead a lamb round on a lead while I dig a ha-ha on the back lawn. If you know a landscape painter, send them round.