RETURN OF A NATIVE: LEARNING FROM THE LAND (PB)

The English countryside is often seen as timeless, remote and shielded from the harshest problems of modern life. Yet, as this book reveals, it is to rural England that we must look for the roots of our current crises. From Bronze Age ruins to the fall-out from Brexit, this is an ecological reckoning with England’s future as well as its deep history. Through stories, interviews and reportage gathered over two decades, it demolishes tired notions of rural England that cast it as a separate realm of existence, whether marooned in a perpetual time-warp, or reduced to a refuge for the retired, wealthy urbanites, extreme nature-lovers, and, more recently, anyone tired of waiting out the pandemic in towns and cities. It poses two simple questions: what does the word rural mean today? What will it mean tomorrow?