Sir Andrew Motion, there’s much more to rural life than housing

Five years of living in squalid parts of London has made me appreciate my rural upbringing. I grew up on a small farm on the borders of West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire. It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty, a stretch of wooded undulations pocketed between the North and South Downs. The house is perched on one of these small hills, facing south east with a view across the flat expanse of East Sussex. On a clear day such as this, you can see the shadow of the Low Weald, the hills which divide Sussex and Kent, through the haze. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.

It is a quiet corner of England; but it has much more to offer than beauty. It lies within striking distance of London, with access to the road and rail networks that have linked the capital and Portsmouth for centuries. The nearest railway station is 7 miles away, and it takes an hour to Waterloo.