Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside

‘Revelatory’ THE SCOTSMAN

‘Eye-opening and persuasive’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Brilliant ? I loved it’ KIT DE WAAL

‘Thoughtful, moving, honest’ CAL FLYN

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.

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.

Living in rural areas means being surrounded by natural beauty, but for many it also demands hard work, precarity, fewer opportunities and – increasingly – being pushed out of the place your family might have called home for generations. In Rural, Rebecca Smith brings together the reasons we all love nature with the histories of life in its midst, and a prescient look at the dynamics for rural areas today. Why are our farmers struggling to make a profit on a pint of milk? What has Airbnb done to small communities in places like the Lake District?

In a gorgeous tour of Scotland, England and Wales, 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.