Herefordshire"s landscape is superb. Much of the topography was shaped by Celtic hilltop farmers, Domesday barons and 18th-century `Improvers", making their successive marks on the primeval geological foundations. Hillforts, Roman outposts, Norman mottes, deserted medieval village sites are all re-populated in a narrative that closely relates the history to the landscape. The chapters on the Norman Conquest, the Marcher lords and the Civil War reveal the county"s influence on those formative periods. Its relative isolation meant it developed a stronger character of its own.