In this – the penultimate contribution to our ‘Environment and History’ series – Gary Willis considers the much-contested ‘national interest’ and its role in wartime land-management. Taking us to the British countryside before, during, and after, World War Two, the post considers how interest groups lobbied, and policy decisions were made, about the rural environment, and alerts us to the political potency of the ‘national interest’ as a concept in times of national emergency — such as the current pandemic.