Landscapes of Detectorists

Home , Detectorists, Mackenzie Crook, The Thick of It

H-HistGeog New Book: Landscapes of Detectorists

Discussion published by Innes Keighren on Thursday, June 25, 2020

Edited by Innes M. Keighren and Joanne Norcup

Uniformbooks, 2020 | 112 pages | £12 | ISBN: 978 1 910010 24 2

https://www.colinsackett.co.uk/landscapesofdetectorists.php

Summary

Taking as its focus the BAFTA-winning BBC Four comedy-drama Detectorists (2014–17), Landscapes of Detectorists considers the programme’s engagement with landscape, its ecological resonances, and its attention to place and identity. The book offers four distinct geographical readings of Detectorists: Innes M. Keighren attends to the sensory, technological, and emotional interpretation of landscape; Isla Forsyth examines the relationship between objects, memory, and place; the significance of verticality, the aerial, and groundedness is discussed by Andrew Harris; and Joanne Norcup explores the contested interconnections of gender, expertise, and knowledge making. The collection is bookended by reflections on the creative processes and decisions that supported the journey of Detectorists from script to screen: in a foreword written by its writer-director, Mackenzie Crook, and in an afterword written by its originating producer, Adam Tandy.

Contents

“Foreword”, Mackenzie Crook “Introduction”, Innes M. Keighren and Joanne Norcup “‘When I look at this landscape, I can read it’—practices of landscape interpretation in Detectorists”, Innes M. Keighren “Hoarding the everyday—the disquieting geographies of the Detectorists”, Isla Forsyth “‘When I get up it just goes to shit’—unearthing the everyday vertical landscapes of Detectorists”, Andrew Harris “‘That’s got to be a first: woman reads map’—gender, hobbies, & knowledge in Detectorists”, Joanne Norcup “Afterword”, Adam Tandy

The contributors

Mackenzie Crook is the BAFTA-winning writer-director of Detectorists. He has appeared in a wide range of both comedic and dramatic roles on television, screen, and stage, including The Office, the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, and Jerusalem. He has published two books for children with Faber and Faber and, more recently, has written and directedWorzel Gummidge, a television miniseries based on the novels of Barbara Euphan Todd.

Isla Forsyth is Associate Professor in Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of

Citation: Innes Keighren. New Book: Landscapes of Detectorists. H-HistGeog. 06-25-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/5280/discussions/6207416/new-book-landscapes-detectorists Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-HistGeog

Nottingham. Her research interests focus on military technologies and landscapes, desert and covert warfare, and the militarisation of nature. She is the author ofSecond World War British Military Camouflage: Designing Deception (2017). She is currently working on the history of spying in the Second World War and on the ethics of using biography and storytelling in the military archive.

Andrew Harris is Associate Professor in Geography and Urban Studies at University College London, where he is convenor of the interdisciplinary MSc Urban Studies programme and Co- Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory. His research develops critical perspectives on the creative city and examines questions of vertical urbanism, particularly in Mumbai and London.

Innes M. Keighren is Reader in Historical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has research interests in geography’s disciplinary and discursive histories, in book history, and in the history of science. He is author of Bringing Geography to Book: Ellen Semple and the Reception of Geographical Knowledge (2010) and co-author ofTravels into Print: Exploration, Writing, and Publishing with John Murray, 1773–1859 (2015). He is currently working on a new book focusing on the transnational reception of the eighteenthcentury Scottish travel writer William Macintosh.

Joanne Norcup is Honorary Assistant Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Research Fellow in the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. Her interdisciplinary research interests span cultural and historical geographies of knowledge-making, archives, popular culture, and public libraries. She is founder of Geography Workshop, an independent production company that has developed programmes for the BBC and Resonance FM. She is also a regular columnist for The Beestonian, where she writes about trees and sustainable allotment gardening. Her current research focuses on questions of decolonisation and knowledge production in relation to the 1998 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and British Council exhibitionPhotos and Phantasms: Harry Johnston’s Photographs of the Caribbean (1908–1909).

Adam Tandy is the BAFTA-winning producer of Detectorists. He has produced several of the most significant British television comedy series of the past quarter century, includingThe Armando Iannucci Shows, The Thick of It, The League of Gentlemen, and Inside No. 9.