Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. This item is unavailable.Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey

"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 OS 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 from its inception in 1791, right through to the OS MasterMap of the present day: a vast digital database. 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.

Rachel Hewitt is the author of A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind (2017) and Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey (2010), which won the Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction, awarded to authors engaged on their first major commissioned works of non-fiction, and was shortlisted for the Galaxy Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year. She has a doctorate in English Literature and has worked at the Universities of Oxford, Glamorgan, and London (Queen Mary). She writes for various publications, including the Guardian, New Statesman and TLS.