George Monbiot's assertion that the National Trust presents a "sanitised, tea-towel history" of our country definitely caused an "ouch" moment for us (Why you'll never find execution or eviction on a National Trust tea towel, 24 February). Not least because in a tea-towel history of the Trust he's quite right. The story of the period a house was built or a collection amassed, and the great families who occupied it, has been what people have tended to see.
But we have, as Monbiot says we should, "begun to acknowledge our past". So today we're increasingly telling the stories of the servants who lived in the houses, the slaves bought and sold, the sometimes questionable imports on which huge wealth was built, and even the squatters who may have made the property their home.
At Penrhyn Castle, visitors now hear the story of the terrible conditions in the North Wales slate quarries; at the back-to-backs in Birmingham you can explore the social history of immigration; or at the Workhouse in the East Midlands you get the chance to understand what life was like for those who lived there - including, more recently, homeless women and children. If our visitors used to be "exposed to a partial and selective view of Britain's past", that is now changing.
Monbiot's old school in the centre of the Stowe Landscape Gardens is another example. Charming though the broken down monuments were that he "played swallows and amazons" around as a schoolboy, they were in grave danger of disappearing altogether. Beautifully repaired - I take issue with his "stark" description - they are an inspiration, and will continue to be.
And now we've acquired Stowe's 18th-century coaching inn where visitors used to arrive, we have the chance to tell Stowe's wider story. As Monbiot suggests, this could include the history of the land - the "village cleared to create the deer park; or about the eviction, imprisonment, transportation or execution of those who lived there". Far from worrying about "scaring our visitors away", as he suggests, we hope this will help them develop a deeper understanding of the place.
But don't let's delude ourselves into thinking that "proper" history today is only about unfolding the less salubrious side of life. Monbiot is right to say that "there is no single history of the countryside and no single means of interpreting it". Our responsibility is to present as much as we know about the whole picture, and to enable people to form their own view.
That is, for me, why our allotments campaign is so significant. Not just because it opens out our properties again for people to take part and become involved (which it does), but because it offers us the chance to tell the story of food from plot to plate. Our land, estates and houses are all inextricably tied up in food production and consumption.
Our founders created the Trust in order to provide open-air "sitting rooms" so that people had space to escape the confines of the city, experience tranquillity, and explore amazing places. Our pledge remains the same; and while Monbiot asks the National Trust to "give us back our history", I hope that the next time he visits his old school he will see that is exactly what we are doing.
• Fiona Reynolds is director general of the National Trust