Overview

‘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.

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9780008526276

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'Too often, the lives of rural people have been overlooked or else romanticised, especially by writers. Not here. With uncommon insight, Rebecca Smith shows the hardship and precarity of rural life, alongside its rewards. She weaves family and social history, and reveals how the inequalities and injustices of the past are still playing out across the land today. Warm, astute and sincere, Rural shows the British countryside as it truly is and always has been: a peopled place' Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North

'Too often, the lives of rural people have been overlooked or else romanticised, especially by writers. Not here. With uncommon insight, Rebecca Smith shows the hardship and precarity of rural life, alongside its rewards. She weaves family and social history, and reveals how the inequalities and injustices of the past are still playing out across the land today. Warm, astute and sincere, Rural shows the British countryside as it truly is and always has been: a peopled place' Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North 'Rebecca Smith has written an unsentimental and refreshing study of the countryside - how it is now and how it was then - asking who were the workers who created the countryside as we know it and what does the future hold for them and their successors? This is a neglected perspective and Rural is a welcome and timely book. Rebecca strikes an elegant balance between appreciating the beauty of the countryside while also graphically describing working class country lifestyles that could be brutal, dangerous and squalid. A wonderful debut that has made me rethink the history and geography of our countryside. Highly recommended' Catherine Simpson, author of Truestory and When I Had a Little Sister

'A wonderful book, beautifully conceived in its movement between different dimensions of a rural working life, Smith's and her family's and all the others, both past and present. And with a seriousness at the heart of it all ... So immediate and clearly seen, so gracefully and gently written ... It is such a valuable thing' Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides 'Rebecca Smith's Rural is a thoughtful, moving, honest book that questions what it means to belong to a place when it can never belong to you: a timely and illuminating exploration of the lives of the countryside working class. Rural reminds us that human stories lie at the heart of the land ownership debate-and that a feeling for place traverses the class divide' Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment 'A vital, questing book about the often misunderstood past, hard present-day, and possible futures of rural life in the UK' Dan Richards, author of Outpost and co-author of Holloway 'Too often, the lives of rural people have been overlooked or else romanticised, especially by writers. Not here. With uncommon insight, Rebecca Smith shows the hardship and precarity of rural life, alongside its rewards. She weaves family and social history, and reveals how the inequalities and injustices of the past are still playing out across the land today. Warm, astute and sincere' Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North 'An unsentimental and refreshing study of the countryside ... Rebecca strikes an elegant balance between appreciating the beauty of the countryside while also graphically describing working-class country lifestyles that could be brutal, dangerous and squalid. A wonderful debut that has made me rethink the history and geography of our countryside. Highly recommended' Catherine Simpson, author of Truestory and When I Had a Little Sister

Author Information

Rebecca Smith worked for BBC Radio for over a decade, producing live and pre-recorded programmes. She now works for the BBC Radio 4 Readings Team, researching titles for Book of the Week and The Fiction Serial. She also reviews for The List, and BBC Radio Scotland's The Afternoon Show. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Scottish Book Trust's Ignite Fellowship.

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