Introduction

Britain is a land of clichés, stereotypes and presumptions. There is some truth in most and we have not tried to dismiss many here. We may well be augmenting many and adding new ones. After all, after Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson is one of the most quoted of English writers, so we are continuing quite a few traditions. There are many limitations to stereotyping and we will list a few next, but very few people (to stereotype) have, or can have, a wide grasp of both the variety and monotony of the human geography of this country simply from having experienced it through actual travel.

Our sources of information may be limited to a few administrative files and a short form completed by most households at the turn of the millennium, but it is surprising to find how many people, especially academic geographers, do not know who else most commonly lives where they live or where they study; think that they are normal when they are often very much better rewarded than the average person; and think that things, such as social mixing, occur much more than they actually can and do.

Thus while there is some truth in most clichés and stereotypes, some understandings of the current busy, crowded life in Britain, let alone China or Peru, are badly misinformed. Different things are also true for different people in different places. What might be a good area to grow up in as an infant can easily be the dullest of villages to experience as a teenager, out of your price bracket and imagined environment of desire as a young adult, to be aspired to later in life and then rejected again even later. The same places can look very different when seen through the eyes of people in different life stages, from the point of view of men or of women, and depending on their personal, household and family circumstances in turn. We have tried to show a little of this variety by considering each life stage in turn.