Landmarks of Britain is the history of the nation, told through the places where it actually happened. Each of the landmarks that Clive Aslet describes tells the story of a great event or figure, and the effect is a sweeping panorama of history, encompassing battlefields, cathedrals, palaces, and places linked with great events in the worlds of science, literature, architecture, religion, espionage, sport, agriculture, and industry. Sites include those associated with the discovery of vaccination and penicillin, the splitting of the atom, the writing of the Messiah, Paradise Lost, and On the Origin of Species, the coinage of the phrase "Anno Domini" and of the equals sign, the smashing of the four-minute mile, and the landing places of the rats that brought the Black Death.