THE PAST IS PASSIVE; it can be moulded, interpreted, reinterpreted. Natalie Zemon Davies introduced her book on Martin Guerre by stating ‘What I offer you here is in part my invention, but held tightly in check by the voices of the past.’ And so this book is also in part my invention, my interpretation of the history of Ashdown Forest, culled from over 50 years of association in various capacities. But I have always been an outsider, though never made to feel so, and have never lived on or even near the Forest. This doesn't necessarily lead to any more or less profound thinking about Ashdown, it doesn't make it any more or less objective. But it has for so long been a presence in my own life that now is perhaps the right time to deal with a mountain of collected material, to assemble, collate, interpret and set out my latest thoughts on what to me is a fascinating landscape.

This book is concerned to trace and understand the conflicts and antagonisms taking place over centuries which have resulted in producing Ashdown Forest, an area of outstanding beauty, now greatly valued but once a working landscape overlooked or scorned by outsiders.

This particular landscape, the Ashdown Forest in Sussex, will not only be traced historically but also placed alongside other similar environments to consider more general issues affecting this and other such landscapes. As such it is a study of a particular type of landscape that happens to be in Sussex; but being in Sussex, in the Weald and in South East England certainly mattered, and still does, as the pressures exerted on Ashdown were magnified by its presence in this more crowded part of Britain and being relatively accessible from London.

This is a biography of landscape, and as in any biography it is essential to trace antecedents. In this case we need to examine the forces of change that have produced the modern landscape.