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Rural: Rebecca Smith on the Lives of the Working Class Countryside


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Rebecca Smith & Malachy Tallack


Work in the countryside ties you, soul and salary, to the land, but often those who labour in nature have the least control over what happens there. 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 - Rural is an exploration of our green and pleasant land, and the people whose labour has shaped it. Beautifully observed, these are the stories of professions and communities that often go overlooked.

We are thrilled to welcome Rebecca back to the bookshop following a tremendous contribution to our Polinations Book Fringe last year - and this time with her debut finally in print!

This book, and this event, is 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. Smith shows the precarity for those whose lives are entangled in the natural landscape. And she 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.

'A thoughtful, moving, honest book that questions what it means to belong to a place when it can never belong to you' CAL FLYN

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