I was struck last week by a story about Alton, a town in Hampshire, where residents have hit on a new basis for object to development in the area: Jane Austen sometimes used to walk there from nearby Chawton. The surrounding landscape, a petition reads, is therefore an important part of our literary heritage and must not be built on.
On the one hand, this is a story about nimbyism and the lengths to which people will go to try to prevent the nightmare of local housebuilding: months of extra noise, increased traffic, a destroyed view and the headache-inducing realisation that complaining about any of this will probably put you in the wrong. After all, as some smug person living outside the development zone will rightly remind you, Britain badly needs more houses and we have to build them somewhere.
