The enduring image of England is a gently rolling patchwork of verdant pastures and hedgerows, but it was not always so. Over the course of millennia, the English landscape has been altered dramatically by the passage of time, and by the successive waves of people who have made it their home. Early Stone Age peoples ventured here from the Continent at least 650,000 years ago to hunt elephants, even before the dramatic changes in climate brought ice sheets to scour the earth. Then came dense forests of oak, later to be felled by settlers and invaders. The character of our landscape is constantly changing, more rapidly now than ever before in human history. This book is a time slice – modern England sitting side by side with places little changed over hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Viewed from the air secrets of the past are revealed where long forgotten hands and ancient ploughs shaped the land to create settlements, fortifications, hill figures, stone circles and burial grounds much of it beautifully, if subtly, preserved, awaiting discovery by anyone who takes the time to look. The text is divided into ten regions, and captions accompany the photographs. For easy navigation, there is an index, and the photographic locations are clearly marked on reference maps.