In Green & Pleasant Land, over a hundred poems drawn from the work of poets spanning four centuries are combined with Gordon Beningfield’s fine pictures (eleven of which have been produced especially for this book) to evoke the England of meandering rivers, lush watermeadows, thick hedgerows and burgeoning vegetation – an England that still exists here and there in places where the pursuit of intensive cultivation has not yet swept all before it. The array of poets whose work is included – from Edmund Spenser and Christopher Marlowe to Ted Hughes and Roger McGough ­ is matched by the rich variety of moods expressed by them. Here are joyful, patriotic, wistful, ecstatic and melancholic sentiments, all charmingly arranged with Gordon Beningfield’s paintings and drawings.