This week I've been reading a really brilliant book and I recommend people to go out and buy it. It's called "News from Nowhere" by the Victorian artist William Morris, a book which was mentioned on "A picture of Britain" last night .It's set in a utopian future after Britain has experienced a socialist revolution and is centred round the observations made by a man from Victorian England who's shocked by the way the world has changed. All the horror of exploitation has gone, all the factories and the workhouses replaced by the beauty of an unspoilted pastoral England, very much in the manner of William Blake. Mancester has disapeared, grown over by grass, things are all very rosey with no mass poverty or pollution. Morris, who was a committed socialist and helped found the early Labour party was convinced that the industrial revolution with all it's progress has compromised the state of man 's soul and driven people from a stable and sustainable agricultural life into the deprivation, gloominess and exploitation of the cities. Of course, when we look back to Victorian times we can see he was right.

He proposed instead of the smog-ridden streets of London a way of life which was more simple and more in harmony with the environment. This is what his book represents and symbolises a clear antithesis to our present world which is still being eaten up by mass urban settlements and pollution. Although I don't agree with everything Morris says his book and subsequent writtings he does have a point about the evils of nature's exploitation and the need to keep green unspoilt spaces for future generations as well as our world's general well-being. Morris imagined is if nothing else a good bench mark for our progress. At a time when Global Warming, pollution, the future of the British countryside and farming as well as mass poverty Morris words resonate with our present anxieties. Definately a good read if nothing else.