THINK OF ENGLAND.(Brief Article)

Every country has an ideal picture of itself; but not every country gets the chance to vote for it. After a shortlist proposed by readers of Country Life, and a final decision by a parish council of media worthies, Britain's Best View has just been announced. It is a prospect of Salisbury Cathedral from the water meadows. In the foreground, ten plump cows, knee-deep in pasture, graze contentedly; the cathedral roof peeks over a wash of luxuriant trees; the spire bisects a sky of perfect early-summer blue, with a few plausible yet unthreatening clouds.

The runners-up were similarly pastoral: Buttermere, in the Lake District; Chesil Bank, in Dorset; Three Cliffs Bay, on the Gower Peninsula; Derwent Water, again in the Lake District. No patriotic Polaroids of Windsor Castle, no creamy Georgian terraces, and, of course, no filthy modern architecture. Though the British (which here mainly means the English) live a predominantly urban or suburban existence, they still think of themselves, spiritually, as rural, even while their Government is proposing new motorways and a new London airstrip and has just announced one of the biggest house-building programs in southern England in decades.

Salisbury Cathedral is not an eccentric choice: the itinerant Bill Bryson judged it the single most beautiful structure in England. Still, the image invites a certain annotation. First, there are no people in the shot. Do the British, when they think of their country, prefer it without the inhabitants? In this they might not be alone: a recent survey of foreign responses to tourists from various countries ranked the British dead last, thanks to their general ...