Sat-nav and internet maps are useful tools, no doubt, but limited. There is more to maps than the functional requirements of the motorist. They are also one of the earliest genres of literature. From the Aborigines of the Australian Outback to the cave painters of Europe, maps were among their earliest productions.

The Ionian Greeks produced the first maps in our classical tradition to fit the revolutionary world views of Herodotus. Julius Caesar standardised maps for tax purposes, but they are almost as boring as commuting by car. It is no surprise that those early navigators, the Portuguese, with their portolanos (illustrated navigational manuals) were the ace mapmakers.

Other mercantile powers, notably England, tempted them to defect: a good map of the other ends of the Earth was as valuable a geostrategic weapon as the Enigma codes five centuries later.

The Ordnance Survey maps, with their contours and symbols, are more than dumb machines to get us from A to B. They are literary and artistic windows on the world. Breathes there a man (or woman) with soul so dead who would sacrifice them for a horrid little machine?

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