And if some of those industries don’t sound particularly rural, the defining factor for Smith’s purposes seems to be that they all lived in homes owned by their employers. For people doing hard, often dangerous work, tied tenancy added to the precarious nature of their existence since losing a job often meant instant homelessness. This is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain. Thompson said: “I think most of us care deeply about the countryside but it’s funny how often it’s characterised as a place of escape for city-dwellers. In her book, Rebecca writes so honestly from both personal experience and research. I’ve learned about bygone trades and ingenious community schemes. I’ve been frustrated by social inequality and reassessed my relationship with Airbnb. This is a gorgeous, truly illuminating book—affectionate, perceptive and fascinating. I’m so happy to be publishing it.” For hundreds of years, if you worked in the countryside, you were usually given a “tied” house to live in. Villages used to have a house for the doctor, the teacher, the policeman, and so on. Foresters were provided with cottages in far-flung, newly-planted forests. Cotton mills, which were first built in the depths of the countryside so that they could take advantage of the waterfalls to power their factories, provided dorm-like accommodation for their workers (who were mainly orphans: children were cheaper to employ). Slate, coal, copper and tin mining all provided rows and rows of badly insulated houses. It’s not a housing crisis, it’s an affordability crisis,” says author Catrina Davies. In other words, it’s not about building more.”

Rural explores the diverse lives and industries entangled in the natural landscape and how they’ve changed. It’s a personal and insightful read for anyone who wants to get under the skin of Britain’s green and pleasant land. I’m often frustrated by contemporary media accounts which simplify or glamorise rural life, focusing on Downton Abbey-style worlds, wild swimming, or cooking on the AGA. In fairness, there have been some improvements on television recently, but Smith’s book provides a healthy counterbalance to the twee, shining a light on professions and communities that many know nothing about. She has a healthy curiosity for the variety of rural lives and a rich range of sources – as evinced by the detailed reference section at the end of the book.In the 1870s, the Manchester Corporation Waterworks made plans to buy two small Cumbrian lakes, Wythburn Water and Leathes Water, and the land surrounding them. They wanted to build a reservoir. The city desperately needed access to clean water for its burgeoning industrial population. But the plan met with virulent opposition. Octavia Hill, later co-founder of the National Trust, set up the Thirlmere Defence Association. John Ruskin went so far as to say he thought Manchester itself ‘should be put at the bottom of the Lake of Thirlmere’. It is a sore blow to you, Maggie. Good-bye.” Whether widows had to vacate their cottages in such circumstances isn’t clear, though often, writes Smith, “miners and their families were literally turfed out of their homes, their furniture thrown after them”. Following a strike at Denaby Main, Yorkshire in the winter of 1902-3, newspapers reported groups of women and children huddled together at roadsides with their rain-sodden possessions. A thoughtful, moving, honest book that questions what it means to belong to a place when it can never belong to you ... Timely and illuminating' This is a moving, tender and illuminating portrait of a class of people rarely thought about, let alone written about, yet who have shaped the dream of the British countryside that still provides our most basic needs. We lived four miles from the closest village, which meant four winding miles to the nearest shop and, of course, the school.’ Rebecca Smith’s brother with her mother. Photograph: Rebecca Smith

And it is a Conservative government that is the main culprit in this; it should argue for the beautiful benefits of the free market, but no, it must make things worse by its leaden handed and ill informed interference. In this beautifully observed book, Rebecca Smith traces the stories of foresters and millworkers, miners, builders, farmers and pub owners, to paint a picture of the working class lives that often go overlooked. This is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain. About This Edition ISBN: Think of the Creagh Dhu mountaineers who escaped the grimness of Depression-era Glasgow during the 1930s, or the families who poured onto boats to head “doon the watter” when shipyards and factories closed for the annual fair fortnight. In her account of early UK tourism, Smith mentions middle-class wanderers who couldn’t afford the aristocracy’s European “grand tours”, and also the disdain expressed by the likes of William Wordsworth towards the humbler wave of travellers, who were often no strangers to damp, squalid housing or many of the other problems she lists as afflicting rural communities.The point is that we have (collectively) chosen to kill the former economic structure. People have no idea what a working rural economy would look because the countryside is just a vehicle for expressing other obsessions of rural idylls or environmental havens or whatever. The third thing I admire is the synthesis, the recognition that manual workers the world over - be they miners or farmers – and their families - are required to live in remote place and often have little agency or control over their surroundings. It's never heavy handed or pompous, presented with a light and personal touch. The author’s family travel with her to many of the places she visits; her own pregnancy making her especially sensitive to the often-undocumented challenges experienced by women in rural areas. The politics of land ownership and rural economics are complex and Smith deserves credit for grappling with some of this territory within an accessible and thought-provoking narrative. There’s much to enjoy in Rural’The Herald - Ownership is a crucial theme of Rural, both strictly legal ownership and subtler senses of belonging. Landowners – whether benevolent, grasping, indifferent, or rewilding – have the advantage. It is estimated that only 432 landowners possess half of Scotland’s rural land and thirty percent of England is owned by the aristocracy (where, unlike in Scotland, there is no general ‘right to roam’). The first thing is the voice. Somehow the author has honed her prose to make it both precise and personal. She speaks directly to the reader with a clarity that is completely unaffected, but recognisably individual. She’s an honest observer, but each anecdote is diffracted through a lens of personal experience, often brimming with mischief.