Agricultural History Review, Volume 69 Part 1 (2021), p. 158

The publisher’s advertorial states that Island thinking is ‘a cultural historical and geographical study of Englishness in a key period of cultural transformation in mid-Twentieth Century Britain’, using ‘a highly regional focus to investigate’. The book is not a systematic, complete analysis of the history of landscape militarization in Suffolk; as the word ‘stories’ and the term ‘island thinking’ suggests, it is more a selective highlighting of those aspects of landscape militarization which create, contribute to, or reinforce the notion that Suffolk is ‘an island within’ England or Britain – and how this is proposed, reflected or reinforced by literature about the county.

Literature is used to justify the choice of Suffolk and to make the case for its metaphysical island identity. O. J. R. Howarth’s 1937 observation that East Anglia was ‘self-contained within the limits of the sea to the north and east, the forest to the south, the Fen country to the west’; Tennyson’s, that the Suffolk Coast is a translation of England into miniature form; Allan Jobson’s 1948 description, in referring to Constable, that ‘Suffolk is an emblem of the nation’; and Claude Messent writing in 1949 that agricultural Suffolk ‘can claim in many ways to be the most English part of England’. Given however that it is Norfolk, not Suffolk, that is bounded on two sides by the sea, it would have been helpful if Davis had spent a little time here on saying why Suffolk had attracted this ‘island’ status rather than its East Anglian counterpart, and perhaps more generally, in order to test the central ‘island thinking’ premise of the book, whether Suffolk is unique in generating ‘island thinking’, and to what extent it can be found in other counties on the geographical periphery and without large metropolitan areas.

Of most interest in this first part of the book is where Davis considers countryside writing’s ‘struggle’ with contemporary militarization. Here Davis’ knowledge of landscape militarization suffuses her analysis of these writings. However, the rest of the chapter is dense with numerous sources and, whilst a valuable compendium of writing on rural Suffolk, is less compelling. Much of the literature referred to is taken at face value and of equal merit; looking at book reviews and sales may have provided some insight as to the relative significance of the various writings.

Davis offers a good account of how Britain was affected by preparations for war (and defence) through the case study of Suffolk. The writing is enlightening and perceptive: ‘the extensive militarization of the Suffolk landscape produced a patchwork of inaccessible areas, transforming the meanings of the land and landscape in England’s “farthest east” towards a felt sense of being on the front line, with the idea of invasion close to hand’. The anti-invasion areas of Suffolk’s Coast represented a new form of enclosure, demonstrating the argument that new metaphorical, if not actual, islands were created within both the island of Suffolk, England, and Britain.

In a chapter on ‘Birds and Belonging’ Davis uses RSPB archives to describe the ‘material circumstances’ of landscape militarization that prompted the return of the avocet to England in 1947 and the development of ‘pioneering’ nature reserves, which encouraged the reintegration of avocets into Britain’s wildlife. This and the subsequent chapter on nature reserves are excellent in highlighting how these reserves ‘managed nature’ to favour the development of the avocet over and above other bird species. Davis quotes from wartime literature and broadcasting portraying birds as ‘the heritage we are fighting for’ and ‘expressions’ of the nation. She argues that the birds became ‘a vehicle for formulations of national identity and ideas of England as a home to which to return and belong’, creatively weaving in references in literature to migrant birds and national identity, although I found the reference to post-war Commonwealth immigration to Britain under-explained in terms of its relevance.

In the chapter on rewilding and war monuments Davis focuses on the former experimental military site at Orford Ness – now a National Trust-managed nature reserve and monument to the Cold War, where rather authoritarian-sounding Trust volunteers have supplanted Ministry of Defence police. In support of describing Orford Ness, Davis introduces a new phrase to my lexicon at least, that of ‘military-academic-industrial complex’, but I can make a stab at understanding what it means. Elsewhere there’s the occasional lapse into impenetrable neo-academic verbiage, such as ‘taskscape-mediated connection between land and sky’, which no matter how many times I read it I am no closer to comprehending.

In contrast, in the ‘Looking to the Skies: Post-war Radar Stories’ chapter, Davis makes a strong argument for the two places in Suffolk at which radar was developed (Bawdsley and a distinct part of the Orford Ness site) being both ‘island-like, even though neither were technically islands’ – and the radar researchers, ‘drove this characterisation process’ by referring to themselves as ‘islanders’. Further feeding the ‘island’ concept, as a major feature of our air defences, Davis argues that radar helped to maintain Britain as an ‘island fortress’. (For readers of this journal the chapter will probably tell you more than you ever need to know about the development of military radar in Suffolk.) What is of interest is the link with avian life – how bird movements were an obstacle to radar development, but subsequently how civil usage of radar subsequently contributed to the developing awareness of bird migration patterns.

What may be most striking to readers of the Review is the almost total absence of reference to how landscape militarization affected agriculture in Suffolk. Davis writes that ‘Suffolk’s countryside … underwent massive changes during the Second World War, from the movement of people to changes in land use, with anti-invasion defences on the coast, airbases and battle training areas, and more mechanised and extensive farming’. Yet a word search of the book brings up ‘agriculture’ only four times and ‘airfields’ and ‘airbases’ only six times each, even though new-build military airbases had an immense impact on Suffolk’s landscape and agriculture, albeit, in many instances, temporarily.

By the end of the Second World War there were 32 military airfields in Suffolk – 23 of them built during the war – and East Anglia as a whole had the highest concentration of new-build military airfields in the country, predominantly for heavy bomber aircraft. Arguably the military airfields were the single largest example of Second World War landscape militarization imposed on Suffolk, but they barely get a mention. Instead, Davis focuses in depth on those aspects of militarization which feed the ‘island’ theme, and ignores those that seemingly do not – although one could argue that islands of crumbling concrete in and amongst Suffolk’s present-day wheat and barley fields could have helped to support Davis’ island concept at least as much as the Orford Ness experimental military site.

Readers should find the overview chapter on landscape militarization in Suffolk, and the chapters on bird life, nature reserves, and the radar development and military experimentation sites extremely informative, even if they might not find themselves buying into the concept of them contributing to and/or reflecting a sense of island identity at county level. More importantly, the price of pursuing the ‘island’ theme is that more significant instances of landscape militarization are all but ignored because for Davis they don’t serve the ‘island identity’ concept. Part literature review, and part socio-cultural, military and conservation history, the book falls between each of these stools (perhaps inevitably). It is more a documentation of the perception of change, rather than detailed historical interrogation of the actual change, although an optimum amount of factual contextual information is provided.