Notwithstanding his role as the president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Bill Bryson speaks with great wisdom on the potential damage the NPPF could do to the English landscape.

If government ministers won’t listen to its own people – Francis Maude, a supposedly clever man at the heart of government, describing their concerns as ‘bollocks’ – perhaps they will listen to an American, who has personal knowledge of the damage done to his country through uncontrolled development.