The book begins with a Preface by Sir Ranulph Fiennes which suggests that the reader is in a for a torrid time: ‘Exmoor has thin soils, high rainfall and still suffers from poor communications – all of these factors combine to make farming, or even just living, on Exmoor a harsh and uncomfortable experience.’ However, Siraut, with her lively narrative style and cleverly selected illustrations, takes the reader on an engaging and diverting journey through landscape and time, over moor, forest and common, and from the earliest prehistoric times to the present day, exploring some of the less well-trodden Exmoor paths as well as presenting more familiar material. This book is one strand of a project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund to explore eleven parishes in the south of Exmoor. These are the Devon parishes of East and West Anstey, Molland and Twitchen, and the Somerset parishes of Brushford, Dulverton, Exford, Exmoor, Hawkridge, Winsford and Withypool, known in the book as ‘southern Exmoor’.

Chapter 1, ‘Southern Exmoor’, describes the study area in terms of its topography, communications and flora and fauna, and briefly characterizes it by quoting from Leland in the 1530s (‘all by forest, barren and moorish ground’) and from Richard Jeffries in the 1880s (‘eight months with continuous rain and heavy fogs’). A helpful map shows the topography, settlements and communication routes, but misses the opportunity to show the parish boundaries. The chapter then poses a series of questions, a device which is used liberally throughout the first two chapters of the book. Some are rhetorical, others are answered in the proceeding narrative. These serve to keep the reader’s engagement with some complex themes and ideas in the narrative, but so many questions can be frustrating when the reader realizes that there may not, in fact, be any answers in the forthcoming text. Some of the questions posed are fundamental to the history of southern Exmoor, such as ‘Why did prehistoric people choose to settle on Exmoor?’ Others are more esoteric and perhaps deserve a study in their own right. I am thinking here of the intriguing question: ‘Were Exmoor people habituated to the moors like the sheep were?’

Chapter 2, ‘The earliest settlement’, by Rob Wilson-North, tackles the prehistoric archaeology of the southern area and provides a welcome summary of the wealth of archaeological research which has taken place on Exmoor over the past decade, including work on the Mesolithic site at Hawkcombe Head, the Neolithic stone settings of Exmoor Forest, the prehistoric settlement at Holworthy and Roman exploitation of the area for iron. Each of these themes is illustrated by colourful reconstruction drawings by Anne Leaver, which add drama and warmth to the narrative.

Chapter 3, ‘The Anglo-Saxon centuries’, begins with another fundamental question: how did southern Exmoor make the transition from the Iron Age British landscape with its hillforts and hill-slope enclosures to become part of the medieval counties of Devon and Somerset with their manors, parish churches and small villages? The chapter weaves together history and examples specific to southern Exmoor to answer this bold question as it outlines the arrival of the West Saxons, Anglo-Saxon settlement, land division, late Anglo-Saxon society and the aftermath of the Norman Conquest.

By Chapter 4, ‘The Middle Ages’, the available historical sources and the surviving medieval fabric of everyday life found in church and farmstead combine to give a convincing account of everyday life in the medieval period on southern Exmoor. With the Royal Forest at its heart, the area relied on many small, mixed farms, while the moors supported thousands of cattle and sheep as well as the wild ponies and deer. A glimpse of such a farm in the mid-fourteenth century is given by an account of the losses suffered by Denise de Reigny while her lands were in the possession of John Payn and his wife Margaret. At Hawkridge she had thirteen acres of fallow land, sixteen acres of crops, including barley and rye, and two meadows. As well as losses of hay and the aftergrass, Denise de Reigney lost her Christmas, Easter and Midsummer rents, sales of winter pasture, cider, perry, the profits from her doves and six tables, a chest and a trough.

Chapter 5, ‘Reformation to interregnum, 1530–1654’, tells how southern Exmoor reacted to the traumatic changes of the Reformation, to shifts in religious and administrative practices, and to the Civil War. The history of the Royal Forest is well known, but this account adds the story of the wool trade, with diverting details (William Westhorne bought caps from a London haberdasher in the 1550s) and, importantly, the life of the farm and village. The story continues into Chapter 6, ‘After the Civil War, 1654–1815’, while Chapter 7, ‘The Exmoor experiment, 1815–45’, re-tells the well-known history of the enclosure of Exmoor Forest and the creation of its new farms by the Knight family, with a useful account of the breeds of farm animals. Chapter 8, ‘The rise and fall of high farming, 1845–1910’, outlines how the enclosure of Exmoor Forest affected the landscape of southern Exmoor and describes the increasing amounts of mineral extraction: limestone and iron. Chapter 9, ‘Exmoor in living memory’, contains some of the most familiar and some of the most surprising material in the book, and it is the illustrations which make this chapter worth studying closely. Local Authority housing at Withypool is prosaic stuff, but the group of anti-hunt protestors from 1957 in their collars and ties and proper hats and the farmhouse kitchen at Driver in the 1920s are images to treasure.

The latter chapters in particular make this book an essential read for those interested in the social history of south-west England, when the interplay of Exmoor’s landscape and its people become the story of families we can identify with. At around the same time that Exmoor: the making of an English upland was published, a rather different book which also looked at Exmoor characters hit the headlines: The Exmoor Files by Liz Jones. Ms Jones, an escapee from London, moved to Brushford and wrote rather scathingly of the landscape and the locals, referring to the harsh environment and the poor dental hygiene respectively. We can only imagine her reaction, had she lived on Exmoor 200 years ago, to the escaped prisoner, George Pearse of Withypool, described in his Wanted Notice in 1761 as ‘about sixty years old, and five feet five inches high; has a large face; a flat mouth, which when he speaks, is drawn rather to one side of his face. He has lost all his fore teeth, and stammers in his speech, leans very far forward in walking, his legs bending outwards.’