The advent of affordable coal in plentiful supply encouraged economic progress, but at the same time brought a largely silent pollution legacy which is still evident today…

Taylor seeks to describe the popular outdoor movement that he maintains has developed generically in both its ‘ideological evolution and its practical expression’ (16), from the earliest establishment of the Footpath Preservation Societies, through the Campaign for Access, and an Outdoor Movement on Wheels.

Two substantive criticisms of Warren Dean’s ‘wood hypothesis’ are offered here: the wood hypothesis is accurate in general but underestimated the industrial consumption of fossil fuels, without conclusively rejecting the competing ‘hydroelectricity’ hypothesis; the method used for estimating potential energy supply from forest area was erroneous.

An environmental history of the Industrial Revolution, as inscribed on the Liri valley in Italy’s Central Apennines.