# Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review. Why this land isn’t your land (The Guardian, 28 Apr 2019) * **Who Owns England? by Guy Shrubsole review – why this land isn’t your land** * By Tim Adams. Published in the Guardian on 28 April 2019 * * **Summary**: * Since the Domesday Book set the standard for a comprehensive land ownership survey –in part so the conqueror could hoover up some of the choicest millions of acres for the crown and its appetite for the hunt– **England has never properly addressed the issue**. * The last major attempt at land reform, which involved a census of ownership, was attempted by the Liberal government of David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in 1909; [it led to constitutional crisis,](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/house-lords-rejects-1909-people%E2%80%99s-budget) neutered proposals and partial data. * One of the most telling facts in Guy Shrubsole’s book is the revelation that **the Land Registry –a body that George Osborne wanted to privatise– possesses details of the ownership of only 83% of England’s green and pleasant plot. Knowledge of the other 17% remains out of bounds even to parliament**. (...) * [**Two-thirds of land in the**](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author) [**UK as a whole**](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-secret-landowners-author) **–40m acres– is owned by 0.36% of the population; 24m families, meanwhile, share the “urban plot” of 3m acres**. * Keywords: land registry, land property, England, United Kingdom (UK) {% hint style="info" %} The article is a review of the book "Who Owns England?: How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back" by campaigner and researcher Guy Shrubsole: {% endhint %}