RURAL: THE LIVES OF THE WORKING CLASS COUNTRYSIDE (HB)

Beautifully observed, these are the stories of professions and communities that often go overlooked. Starting with Rebecca Smith's own family history - foresters in Cumbria, miners in Derbyshire, millworkers in Nottinghamshire, builders of reservoirs and the Manchester Ship Canal, the book explores our green and pleasant land, and the people whose labour has shaped it. It shows the precarity for those whose lives are entangled in the natural landscape and traces how these rural working-class worlds have changed. As industry has transformed - mines closing, country estates shrinking, farmers struggling to make profit on a pint of milk, holiday lets increasing so relentlessly that local people can no longer live where they were born - we are led to question the legacy of the countryside in all our lives.