Rebecca Smith explores the British countryside in great depth in this personal and insightful book
Review by Elizabeth Wainwright
Often, books about the natural world are written by people who peer in from the outside, while those who actually live and work in nature are little heard. Rural pushes back against this. Author Rebecca Smith grew up in a worker’s house on a country estate, the daughter of a forester who worked on its land. Growing up, friends would assume that her family was wealthy because she had access to so much space and nature. But access doesn’t necessarily mean wealth.
With Smith’s own family history at its heart, Rural explores the working-class countryside and what we lose when we can’t or won’t hear its stories. She introduces us to some of these stories via people working in coal, wood, food, development and other rural industries.
Smith meets farmers no longer able to secure farm tenancies, their futures uncertain. She speaks with families who worked in mining and in textiles. In a chapter about development and planning, she learns how, thanks to the 1930s Housing Act, councils built almost 160,000 homes for people working in rural industry. ‘I guess providing homes in the countryside was seen as a benefit to society back then.’ Now, building homes in the countryside is difficult. Smith considers all angles: ‘I don’t like to see huge developments where fields used to be… but if people are forced out of the countryside, how will we ever learn to understand it, to love it?’
Rural made me think of my own home in rural Devon. Here, there are towns and villages where locals can no longer afford to live; pubs close as holiday-homers aren’t around to become part of the fabric of place. Smith explores these issues without turning the book into a polemic, leaving room for nuance and difficult questions.
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.
