British villages evoke images of serenity, slow and peaceful change, lanes, gardens, cottages… a reassuring continuity with the past. All over Britain, however, there are villages that were planned: invented for aesthetic, philanthropic or political reasons, for convenience and for ideals. The best known are Milton Abbas, New Lanark and Port Sunlight. Villages of Vision includes hundreds of these planned villages, among then strange and pretty arcadias built by conscience-stricken aristocrats, industrialists and visionaries. The book includes a gazetter showing, county by county, where such villages can be seen – not as museums but as evolving, living places. David McKie, the Guardian’s McElsewhere, provides a preface.