11 JULY 1992, Page 42

Long life

In praise of maps

Nigel Nicolson

Wen I was a boy and people asked me (as they did in those days, but now they have more consideration) what I would like to be when I grew up, I invariably replied, to quell their impertinence, that I would like to be Director General of the Ord- nance Survey. I meant it, and I still do. The present Director, David Rhind, might say that if I tried it for just one week, I would change my mind, but more probably he would agree that to preside over his vast geographical supermarket at Southampton

is the most gratifying job in the world because its purpose is the most useful and its product the most pleasing.

I have always liked maps, the history of them and the history they contain. I have wondered why the Greeks and Romans were so bad at making them, why Colum- bus took no trained cartographer with him, and why people thought that our island looked like a squashed muffin until in 1579 Christopher Saxton published his atlas of England and Wales and suddenly its famil- iar outline swam into focus. I have enjoyed handling Old maps which people used before they became reliable, like the map of Russia in the British Library which was all that Napoleon had to guide him in 1812, picking out with grubby forefinger, as sure- ly he did, the tiny italicised names of Borodino and the Beresina. But above all I delight in the modern O.S. maps, jumping from scale to scale like a zoom lens, using them on foot or wheels to make journeys of discovery, or scrutinising them under the lamplight to go for mental walks in unknown country.

Our Ordnance Survey originated in the 1790s to map the southern counties in case of invasion, but though it has kept its mili- tary name to this day, its civilian function soon took over. The British Isles were sur- veyed during the 19th century with so fine an accuracy that one of its baselines, eight miles long, was found when re-measured in 1960 to be only one inch out of true. Not only were the maps accurate, but from the earliest days a joy to look at, sometimes exceeding the beauty of the country, and usually of the towns, that they depicted.

A map is a palimpsest of human ingenu- ity. Why did a village grow into a town, a town into a city? Why does a railway or a motorway take that particular route? The answers need deduction, but more often the information is conveyed by the 0.S. directly. On the Landranger series (11/4 inches to the mile) you can tell at a glance the difference between a church with tower or spire, or one with neither; a windmill with sails is thus symbolically equipped, in disuse it is sullenly dumb. You are guided to the nearest post office, pub, public lava- tory, battlefield or picnic table. The distinc- tion between roads and tracks has been refined by a century of experiment to immediate intelligibility. In the Pathfinder series (21/2-inch) the rights-of-way are des- ignated beyond argument. No wonder that over two million are sold each year. The Ordnance Survey has made us a nation of map-lovers. It has also made us a nation of walkers. In the United States it is rare to find in a country house even the local 1/25,000 map in their excellent USGS series. All it will have is the state map picked up free in the gas-station. But in England, every stationer's shop sells the O.S. maps. Why the difference? Because, an American has suggested to me, they think big: we think small. A more likely explanation is that we walk: they don't.