As a Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, local historian Kate Tiller occasionally has the job of congratulating people on obtaining British citizenship. On such occasions, she told me, she explains that Britain, and any particular part of it, is all about continuous change. Everything is always evolving.

In many ways An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire, which she has edited with cartographer Giles Darkes, illustrates this point at a glance. With its 120 maps designed to accompany texts from 42 expert contributors, It succeeds in “cutting across ways of thinking and boundaries”, as Dr Tiller puts it.

Speaking for myself, it has already caused me to look at the landscape with new eyes. For instance, I have learned something about the bumps in the ground which I see from the train near Ascott-under-Wychwood of a morning: they are the remains of three motte-and-bailey castles built in a row along the banks of the River Evenlode shortly after the Norman Conquest. Dr Tiller said: “One of the purposes of the atlas is to put particular places into the context of county developments.”

Clearly it has been a “labour of love,” as the Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire, Tim Stevenson, says in his preface; but equally clearly, Dr Tiller is one of those lucky people who has managed to turn her great love for local history into a profession.

She was made a fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford, in 1990. Then, as director of studies at Oxford University’s department for continuing education, she planned Oxford’s first degree designed for part-time students: the MSt in English local history, introduced in 1993. She also has a list of publications as long as your arm, but few academics can have done more to make their subject accessible — and she has been rewarded by seeing a huge rise in interest in local history. She said: “It’s something more and more people are being drawn into. I want to spread the word and engage.”

The atlas to some extent illustrates this. Among contributors is Shaun Morley, a former Oxford police commander who took an Oxford degree in local history. He wrote the text on Friendly Societies in Oxfordshire which, alongside a map showing the geographical distribution of societies at different periods of the 19th century, provides an insight into how working people made ends meet in good times and bad.

The atlas contrives to give an idea of what it has been like to be an ordinary person living in Oxfordshire at different periods since before the Romans.

“No county is an island, but of course a county atlas runs the danger of making it look like one. We have therefore tried to show how Oxfordshire has always fitted into the wider context — with one map deliberately extending beyond the county boundaries.”

Under her auspices the Oxfordshire volume comes over as surprisingly modern in its approach. “Perhaps I am helped in this respect by being married to Liam, formerly an Oxfordshire planning officer.”

Mr Tiller brings the county’s history up to date in his text Town and Country Planning in the 20th Century, accompanied by a map illustrating which towns were designated for major growth in the 1976 County Structure Plan (Witney, Bicester, and Banbury); areas of outstanding natural beauty (Cotswolds and Chilterns); and Oxford’s Green Belt.

He writes: “The control of urban expansion, and the protection of the landscape setting of Oxford and the countryside in general were the dominant features of planning themes in Oxfordshire throughout the 20th century.”

But when, I asked Dr Kate Tiller, did attitudes to history and environment change to that modern way of thinking? After all, for centuries ordinary people could think of little else but obtaining food and shelter; then suddenly there were planners worrying about “preserving the environment”.

“It stems from the 18th- and 19th-century Malthusian trap,” she answered, “when technology increased to such a level that a rising population no longer meant falling living standards.”

I understand what she meant about nothing being static in history. We are in the middle of an electronic revolution comparable in size to the industrial revolution. How will a future historical atlas map its impact, I wonder?

More blue plaques to pioneers of the revolution will doubtless go up — and they will go up under the direction of a successor of Dr Tiller. For on top of everything else she chairs the Oxfordshire Blue Plaques Board. What a bundle of energy — and brain.

* An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire is published by Oxfordshire Record Society at £20.