Beneath Clouded Hills: A More-Than-Human Approach to “Deep England”
UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies
Vol. 22 (2025): Below
Read the full article here
Intro
I’d like to tell you a story, ‘bout how England came to be…
So begins a retelling of Des Grantz Geanz, a more-than-human origin tale of England (Birt & Helle, 2023), which recounts how thirty exiled giants were the first to appear on Albion’s shores, named so after the eldest. Here, they lived in harmony with the existing flora and fauna until the tyrant Brutus invaded and made them flee underground. The tale starts off Beneath Clouded Hills, an artist film by Verity Birt and myself, which forms part of a wider art and research project in which we explore the ambiguous term “Deep England” (Birt & Helle, 2023).
The notion of Deep England invokes a particular kind of England and Englishness; images of a picture-perfect rural idyll centred around agricultural ways of living; a bucolic landscape of village greens, country fairs, and local pubs. It inadvertently lays claim to an authentically English way of life, yet it is by no means representative of how most people in England live today. The landscape of Deep England is ultimately then a landscape of the imaginary, used as the familiar backdrop to well-known stories and television productions. Wind in the Willows, Midsomer Murders and The Detectorists all have a distinct Deep English feel to them—or as shorthand for an undefined ‘golden era’, located always in an equally undefined past (Williams, 2016)....
