A land worth fighting for Wordsworth's heart did not leap up when he beheld a windmill on the skyline, but many a heart must have been cheered this week when John Hayes, the energy minister, declared "enough is enough" when it comes to building onshore wind farms. He knows how widespread is the conviction that they "spoil" the landscape. The British countryside has been in our thoughts too because of this terrible fungal disease of ash trees. We've lost the elms, now the ashes are falling, and oaks are threatened. Where will it end? The anxiety is so strong because it is in our national culture to think ourselves country-lovers, even though many of us spend our lives in towns. Jerusalem is popular not just for Parry's music. And the realisation grows that defenders of the countryside are not obscurantists and enemies of progress, but fundamentally right. Consider John Betjeman. Under that guileless and shambling exterior, a sharp intellect was at work. Why, he asked, should we put up with mean architecture, ugly streets and the spoiling of the landscape by ill-planned blots? "The noisier and more congested our towns become," he wrote in The Daily Telegraph in 1962, "the more essential are the belts of real country." Fifty years on, this paper must still argue that adequate housing should not mean concreting over the country. As the Weekend section suggests today, Betjeman's Britain remains some of the best of modern Britain.