Rural : The Lives of the Working Class Countryside by Rebecca Smith

?~Revelatory?T THE SCOTSMAN ?~Eye-opening and persuasive?T SUNDAY TIMES ?~Brilliant ? I loved it?T KIT DE WAAL ?~Thoughtful, moving, honest?T 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