Reviews: The Atlas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Historian R. K. Webb reviews the 1963 Atlas of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, planned and directed by D. P. Bickmore and M. A. Shaw. He traces the national-atlas project from prewar discussions to its revival by academics in 1951, without state funding, and subsequent support from Clarendon Press. Webb praises the atlas’s visual quality, cartographic ingenuity, and especially its geological and climatic maps. He questions its usefulness as a historical cross-section of mid-century Britain: inconsistent dates undermine comparisons of coal and oil, rail and road traffic, and retail sales. He also criticizes unexplained choices in industrial mapping and omissions in social coverage, including unemployment, education, religion, and health beyond a mortality map. The absence of statistical sources, he argues, obstructs further inquiry. Webb concludes that impressive technical achievement is compromised by editorial decisions insufficiently attentive to scholarly utility.