In this event Professor Glen O’Hara (Oxford Brookes University) delivered latest in the Society’s programme of 2026 lectures on ‘In All Our Footsteps? Rights of Way and the Battle for the Land after the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act’.

The lecture took place on Friday 25 September 2026 and was hosted by the Royal Historical Society at the Institute of Historical Research, London, and online.

 

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About this lecture

In this lecture Glen O’Hara considers the origins and impact of the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act, the post-war Labour government’s plan for the land.

In this plan development would be controlled and its profits nationalised; National Parks would be established; access agreements reached. Most importantly the country would be opened up for everyone, everywhere, via a Definitive Map containing every right of way in England and Wales. In his lecture, Glen details the long struggle to realise those plans, and their uncertain fate as successive governments argued and puzzled over how practical and desirable that expansive vision really was.

About our speaker

Professor Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History in the School of Education, Humanities and Languages at Oxford Brookes University. He is author of New Labour, New Britain? How the Blair Governments Reshaped the Country (2026) and The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain (2017).