Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey - Paperback

by Rachel Hewitt (Author)

Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map - the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and Map of a Nation is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the men who dreamt and delivered it. The Ordnance Survey's history is one of political revolutions, rebellions and regional unions that altered the shape and identity of the United Kingdom over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It's also a deliciously readable account of one of the great untold British adventure stories, featuring intrepid individuals lugging brass theodolites up mountains to make the country visible to itself for the first time.

Author Biography

RACHEL HEWITT completed her doctoral thesis on the subject of the early Ordnance Survey at the University of London in 2007, and is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She won the 2008 Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction for this project. She lives in Cambridge.