Britain has an enviable reputation throughout Europe for the strength and clarity of its antiroad protest movement. Road protests have made a dramatic impact on transport and environment policy in Britain. They have brought together very disparate groups and exposed people to the iniquities of the public inquiry system. More importantly, road protests have engaged tens of thousands of local people in the politics of social and environmental change in a way that nothing else could have managed. All this is difficult to comprehend, but Barbara Bryant has produced as clear an insight as we are going to get from the very core of the local protest movement.

Bryant painstakingly documents the detail of the protest at Twyford Down and the social and personal upheavals that accompany the business of getting involved. It is a catalogue of enormous importance and it exposes the weaknesses, inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and incompetence of many institutions. Almost all the institutional players in this sorry saga behaved badly at some time. Most behaved badly all the time. Bryant does not waste time in a display of anger or even sorrow but her account of the activities of the Countryside Commission, English Heritage, the Council for the Protection of Rural England and Hampshire County Council provides ample case-study material for those interested in the role of institutional factors in determining environmental outcomes and in exploring the reasons why local people and local campaigning groups often have expert knowledge and expert insights that far surpass those of institutions.

Bryant's account is not an account of how the campaign was won and who should get the glory. The campaign failed in its primary objective to stop the construction of a road around Winchester and her account is all the more useful and stimulating for that failure. Her style is honest and direct and the lack of exaggeration or hyperbole adds to the lasting impression of the enormity of the environmental vandalism caused by the road through Twyford Down.

This book is a real contribution to learning. It has many more useful things to convey than several shelves of books on transport economics and transport policy. It could even encourage academic transport specialists to reflect a little on the nonsense that has reinforced professional reputations for the past 30 years. The irrelevance of cost-benefit analysis, however elegant, to how people really feel about their lives and the environment is important for all of us to understand, as is the unpleasantness and bullying character of the public inquiry process that provides a democratic smokescreen for these environmental crimes.

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Twyford Down deserves to be reflected upon as part of a re-evaluation of personal lifestyle and professional purpose. This is far more important than disappearing into the reading lists and obscurity of academic courses. It shows where we went wrong. We are repeating the mistake at Newbury and at Daisy Nook in Manchester, and accounts such as Bryant's challenge our ability to think and reflect on what we are doing and why.

John Whitelegg is professor of environmental studies, Liverpool John Moores 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ.

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