Abstract/Summary

This chapter analyses the conventions of rural representation in films from the collections at the Museum of English Rural Life (at the University of Reading). Their iconography is in dialogue with stated and unstated assumptions about the role of the English countryside, in relation to food production, the preservation of rural life and rural heritage, the role of technology and patterns of labour. The films were made by agricultural firms and government agencies, and represent people who were the agents of change, and its beneficiaries and victims. The chapter argues that these images open up a new way of understanding existing histories of the land and its uses in post-War Britain.