But instead of remaining nurturing and verdant, beautiful and timeless in the mind of Britain, the countryside has become a place of pestilence, disease and death. It remains to be seen if images of dead sheep burning acid orange against the night sky and reports of shot-gun fire in the deep peace of the English countryside, will slow his attempt to earn a term. But in the long run, the virus may have infected more than barnyard animals. Yet Britain, cradle of the Industrial Revolution, was the first nation to urbanize in the late 18th century. Today, two-thirds of the population lives in cities or suburbs.
British television is full of prime-time shows on the history and biology of the countryside.
The equivalent for Americans is our treasured symbolic West. This will become evident to George W. Bush when he tries to let mining and oil interests blast, dig and drill in places Americans see as emblems of their heritage. Similarly, most British people, like most Americans, don't know their way around a barn and wouldn't know the first thing about how to milk a cow or grow beans or shear a sheep. It's no accident that the countryside began to be romanticized the minute agricultural labor ceased to be the dominant way of making a living. Citizens who cherish Edenic visions of the countryside don't recognize the rural England they see on television every night, either.