BBC Radio 4

Each age 'invents' the countryside to chime with the preoccupations of the day. In this ten-part series, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen explores the ways in which, over the centuries, the countryside has been shaped for personal agrandisement, for moral improvement, as the creation of an 'ideal' landscape, as a place of health and healing and as a refuge from (and comment on) the pace, nature and stress of contemporary urban life. He shows how these ideas find echoes in our current attitudes to the countryside.

Our tendency to idealise the countryside hasn't always reflected the reality of rural life. But it provides a fascinating glimpse of our dreams and fears as a society.