Rachel HewittReseñas

I had to DNF this book. I really really wanted to like it, and I tried hard for about 300 pages, but ultimately when the thought of continuing on made me feel queasy, I decided that enough is enough.

The author is trying too hard to make this book be an Everything book. I wasn't looking for a book on Everything. I wanted to read a book about badass women from the late 19th century who were outside being awesome. Instead, this book is about (1) the author's grief (2) the author's running (3) the author's grief (4) sometimes we learn about cool women from the 19th century (5) the author's grief (6) how awful it is to be a women (7) the author's grief (8) scary statistics about being female today (9) the author's grief.

Having just lost two very important people in my life last year, I get the desire to unload grief everywhere. It's omnipresent and hard to shake. Maybe that's also why I was in no mood to listen to the author unload her own grief in this book. Like, lady, I can't. Also, that's not why I picked up a book called "In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors" (not "Rachel Hewitt Lost Five Family Members: A Memoir and Rant").

Also, while I don't disagree that sexism is still pervasive in twenty-twenty-freaking-four, the scaremongering about how awful it is to go outdoors is a pet peeve of mine. I'm tired of people saying that I'm going to get assaulted if I go outside. You know what that does? That scares me away from claiming my rightful space in the outdoors. I refuse to be fear mongered to. Granted, I am privileged to live in a safe area. I acknowledge that. But still, freaking stop. Also: not what I was expecting to read about in a book that is nominally about badass historical sportswomen.

So, if you have any desire to read about badass women mountaineers from the 19th century and have no desire to skim, SKIP THIS BOOK.½

Good and entertaining account, but I would have liked more technical details and local history of the survey and its consequences and perhaps less of the elite social history. The coverage of the Ordnance Survey of southern England and Ireland is enlightening, but the coverage peters out before mid-19th century -- thirty years before the First Series maps were completed, and before the work was well underway with the survey of Scotland. It would also have been interesting to highlight further the parallel work before and during the period covered of mapmaking in France and triangulation of India.
For map lovers, the paperback format unfortunately makes some of the illustrated maps illegible, and cannot hint at the beautiful detail of the later 6" and 25" per mile maps.½

Packed full of great history and research, but Hewitt hasn't got Peter Moore's knack of telling the story so you can thoroughly revel but also retain. So saying, it will stay with me as a terrific reference book and one to dip into, now I know what treasures lurk inside.

Puts the Ordinance Survey right on the map :). Something we walkers and scramblers have always loved, maps carried next to our hearts across the hills and through the rain, sleet and (rarely) burning sun. Winter nights on the kitchen table plotting routes. And 20 years ago wished for abroad in countries where whole hillsides seemed to be missing from the local maps! A moment in time just as the world changes - GPS, SATNAV, satellite pictures. The author places the start of the Ordinance Survey firmly in the military world, beginning with the Highland clearances and wars with France, continuing with Ireland and the the mapping for taxation, the massive social implications of fixing place names and not forgetting the struggle of the 20th century for access to land. The military, economic and political setting gives the book a real bite without detracting from the heroics of the multitude of people who walked the land actually doing the mapping.

I know the exact moment I fell in love with this book. It came on page fifteen of the prologue, wherein Rachel Hewitt describes the debacle of a manhunt that followed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. For want of a decent map of Scotland, England's fearsome army was led a merry chase across the Highlands by a half-lame septuagenarian and managed to lose "Bonnie" Prince Charles altogether. Charles's defeat came at the Battle of Culloden, famous for being the last pitched battle fought on the British Isles, and infamous for the bloodthirsty zeal of the English troops during and following the battle.

The English army annihilated the two thousand or so Scotsmen in around forty five minutes, and for anyone not quite sure how long forty five minutes is, Rachel Hewitt explains that it's "the time it takes to enjoy a soak in the bath". Upon reading this unlikely comparison between a scene of unimaginable bloodshed and a Cadbury's Flake advert, my eyebrows and jaw raced away from one another. Once I'd dragged down the former and pulled up the latter, I let out a sound somewhere between a snort of appreciation for the outrageous analogy and a snigger of expectation at what other delights the book would hold.

The story of the Ordnance Survey maps turns out to be a fascinating one, and Hewitt tells it brilliantly. Not since Longitude have I been so enthralled by such a dry sounding subject, but not even Dava Sobel wrote this well. The book is always comprehensive but never too slow nor patronising, and has many a nice personal touch as well. The characters that brought the Survey to life are herein brought to life themselves, and thanks to some well placed and never smarmy personal recollections of the author, the book itself almost has a life of its own.

The subject matter might not be to everyone's tastes, but maps aside it's a riveting tale of human triumph over and alongside nature and the elements with some intriguing cameos and some genuinely touching drama. And surely everyone appreciates a book with all that.

I know the exact moment I fell in love with this book. It came on page fifteen of the prologue, wherein Rachel Hewitt describes the debacle of a manhunt that followed the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. For want of a decent map of Scotland, England's fearsome army was led a merry chase across the Highlands by a half-lame septuagenarian and managed to lose "Bonnie" Prince Charles altogether. Charles's defeat came at the Battle of Culloden, famous for being the last pitched battle fought on the British Isles, and infamous for the bloodthirsty zeal of the English troops during and following the battle.

The English army annihilated the two thousand or so Scotsmen in around forty five minutes, and for anyone not quite sure how long forty five minutes is, Rachel Hewitt explains that it's "the time it takes to enjoy a soak in the bath". Upon reading this unlikely comparison between a scene of unimaginable bloodshed and a Cadbury's Flake advert, my eyebrows and jaw raced away from one another. Once I'd dragged down the former and pulled up the latter, I let out a sound somewhere between a snort of appreciation for the outrageous analogy and a snigger of expectation at what other delights the book would hold.

The story of the Ordnance Survey maps turns out to be a fascinating one, and Hewitt tells it brilliantly. Not since Longitude have I been so enthralled by such a dry sounding subject, but not even Dava Sobel wrote this well. The book is always comprehensive but never too slow nor patronising, and has many a nice personal touch as well. The characters that brought the Survey to life are herein brought to life themselves, and thanks to some well placed and never smarmy personal recollections of the author, the book itself almost has a life of its own.

The subject matter might not be to everyone's tastes, but maps aside it's a riveting tale of human triumph over and alongside nature and the elements with some intriguing cameos and some genuinely touching drama. And surely everyone appreciates a book with all that.

Meticulously researched, as highly detailed as the maps whose story it relates.

Lots of detail and anecdotes about the people involved in setting up the Ordnance Survey, their families, their ideas, their ambitions, even their pet dogs, but precious little about the actual making of the maps which was a bit disappointing. Covers only the early formation of the survey and stops in about 1840 or so. I would have liked a bit less of Wordsworth and a bit more about the technicalities.

Government forces were hampered in their attempts to catch Lord Lovat and Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden in 1745 by the lack of good maps of Scotland. David Watson and William Roy produced the Military Survey of Scotland and then, amid fears, of a French invasion a map of England's southern coasts. With the enthusiastic support of the Duke of Richmond the project was expanded to include the whole of England and Wales under the Board of Ordnance in 1791 but it was not until 1870 the First Series of Ordnance Survey maps was completed.

Rachel Hewitt tells the story of how Britain and Ireland were mapped amid many distractions with all sorts of interesting nuggets by the way.

Interesting account of the origins of the Ordnance Survey, stretching back to the aftermath of Culloden in 1746 and full of Scottish input, particularly in the early years. We take maps for granted (and did so long before GPS etc), yet it took over a century to complete the 'first series' maps of the UK and Ireland.½

Maybe I was expecting too much, given all the good press this book got when first published, but I thought it was only all right.

I liked the way Hewitt placed the significance of map making within contemporary culture - military need, popular culture (poetry, Enlightenment, tourism), social change (road improvements, enclosure, rise of the city), scientific advances in instrument making and mathematics. I didn't like the sometimes disjointed style, the occasionally weird asides, it not knowing whether to be serious history or popular history, and its at times gossipy tone.

I was interested in the men who worked on the Ordnance Survey, I was less interested in reading extracts from poems, or hearing about the lives of Wordsworth and Coleridge. I get why they appeared in the book, for the context they brought, but I'd rather buy a biography of them as individuals than read snippets of their lives as an aside in a history of map making.

Fascinating account of the Ordnance survey and mapping of Britain

Puts the Ordinance Survey right on the map :). Something we walkers and scramblers have always loved, maps carried next to our hearts across the hills and through the rain, sleet and (rarely) burning sun. Winter nights on the kitchen table plotting routes. And 20 years ago wished for abroad in countries where whole hillsides seemed to be missing from the local maps! A moment in time just as the world changes - GPS, SATNAV, satellite pictures. The author places the start of the Ordinance Survey firmly in the military world, beginning with the Highland clearances and wars with France, continuing with Ireland and the the mapping for taxation, the massive social implications of fixing place names and not forgetting the struggle of the 20th century for access to land. The military, economic and political setting gives the book a real bite without detracting from the heroics of the multitude of people who walked the land actually doing the mapping.

The British Ordnance Survey is respected the world over, but often underestimated in value by us Brits. Its true value only becomes apparent when we travel abroad and find we cannot get maps of foreign parts with the same range, detail and authority as we can at home. We always seem somewhat bemused that something we take for granted at home is considered a luxury at best and a military secret at worst when we travel. Hewitt provides an excellent and stirring history of the Ordnance Survey and the development of the first complete map of the British Isles and Ireland. Written from a love of maps and from being charmed by the largely eccentric group of men who drove and led the efforts to produce a single map Hewitt has produced a lively and interesting tale of the hardships and daring of these men. Could have done with more maps as illustrations!

This is an interesting history of how the first Ordnance Survey map of England & Wales came to be produced and published in 1870. The story starts over 100 years earlier, with the problems the military had in pursuing the clansmen after Culloden - there was no map to refer to - all the geographical knowledge was in the heads of the locals. this progresses from a survey for purely military purposes, through estate maps of the landed gentry to wide ranging linguistic, geologic, naturalistic and geographic surveys of the British Isles (plus further flung territories). The various characters that played a prominent role in the undertaking are described and it is quite an engaging read, not simply a dry recitation of dates.

If you are into maps this is well worth reading

Rachel Hewitt is a young historian, and her bio outline says that she is continuing her ”Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship, and has taken up the Weinrebe Fellowship in Life-Writing. She is a member of the English faculty, and attached to the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College.”

The book blurb mentions her degree (and thesis) was in the study of maps and sometimes this rather heavy read does indeed carry echoes of an academic thesis. However, for those of us that can sit and read a map or sea-chart with fascination and interest this book is an important and engrossing read. I first came across the famous OS maps as a young boy scout, when we were taught map reading and plotting and throughout my career of international travel – with a few ex-Empire exceptions – realized they are unique in their detail and no other country has such a depth of charting in its maps for the citizen. Before the arrival of the ubiquitous GPS and online maps there was not any other such detailed outline of the country.

The OS series were are and are meticulously maintained and regularly updated … once when we obtained a new copy of a well-used map (used for walking, addresses, history rambles and Rallying and even river sailing) we were astonished to find a small garage we had recently added to our country bungalow in Kent had been charted and added – to scale!

There were of course advantages for the British in undertaking to survey and minutely chart their country… it is a relatively small nation to map, it is politically integral, and this book details why the very early start of deep military mapping was undertaken – a common motive for action in British history – Napoleon.

The need for defensive surveying, fortifications, the battle with their ‘field of fire’ were stimulated by “Bony” and his threat of invasion. Despite many, typically political parsimony, the gradual success of a very tiny cast of characters resulted in the nation-wide mapping of every hillock, hamlet and brook.

The sheer quality of these OS maps are such that they remain a treasured and collectible service to the British public and Rachel Hewitt’s ‘biography’ of their creation should be collected too, by any map buff or, indeed, anyone that can read a map.

One of the most fascinating books I have read for a long time, with the added savour of utter serendipity. I stumbled across it by chance and decided to give it a go.
On the face of it a history of the Ordnance Survey might not sound particularly enthralling but in fact this book proved utterly gripping. Starting in the months immediately following the defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden it covers the various attempts, driven by military necessity, to develop a reliable system of maps to enable the government more comprehensively to know about the exact extent and nature of the country, and how local and regional issues might more readily be addressed.
The whole process encompassed mastery of geometry, trigonometry, engineering, astronomy, geology and geography, and was eventually to take decades. As was the case with so much government policy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a fair peppering of Francophobia thrown in too, which is never wholly ungratifying!
This is another of those technical histories, in the tradition of Dava Sobel's "Longitude" or Mark Kurlansky's "Cod", which repay the reader's curiosity, and might just prove to be an unforeseen commercial success. I certainly hope so.½

Was this a PhD thesis that was published? I have a great interest in the subject matter, but I found this tome totally unreadable. Too much detailed (almost pedantic) information about minute things, not enough readable history of the survey.