Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land

For many of us, Britain is countryside - drystone walls, stiles, sheep on a distant hillside. But farmers themselves often remain a mystery: familiar but unpredictable, a secretive industry still visible from space. Who are these people who shape our countryside and put food on our tables? And what does it take to pull a life out of earth? From fruit farmers to fallen stock operators, from grassy uplands to polytunnels, Bella Bathurst journeys through Britain to talk to those on the far side of the fence. As farmers find themselves torn between time-honoured methods and modern appetites, these shocking, raw, wise and funny accounts will open out a way of life now changing beyond recognition.

About the Author :
Bella Bathurst is a writer and photojournalist. Her books include The Lighthouse Stevensons and Sound, Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. Her books have won or been shortlisted for several awards including the 1999 Somerset Maugham Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger. She lives on a farm in Wales.

Review :
Highly researched and deeply thoughtful ... Bathurst peers under the bonnet of these lives and reveals things that rarely make it into print. She has a talent for asking the right questions ... Field Work is by turns funny, enlightening, frustrating and deeply sad. A beautiful hybrid of social history, memoir and nature writing, Field Work manages to bring an entire world out of the shadows. ... Bathurst shows us how interesting all life is if viewed with the correct mixture of sympathy and curiosity A genuine attempt to get under the fingernails of the people who work in land-based industries and understand why they carry on doing what they do, usually for little financial reward, often in great discomfort and in the face of adversity. And it is a distinguished work of journalism by someone who asks the questions that the reader wants asked [and] sifts the answers perceptively ... This thought-provoking book portrays, with uncomfortable accuracy, life on the green bits beyond the 30-mile limits of Britain's towns A vivid portrait of a fast-changing world A revealing portrait of farming in modern Britain A priceless portrait of one of the least understood and frequently most vilified of people: farmers. It should really be read by all in this country who buys food - i.e. everyone. If anyone wants to understand farming better, I would press this book into their hands ... The writing is at once tough and lyrical, unsentimental, piercingly truthful and observant ... heart-wrenching as well as dryly funny ... Field Work is a superb testament to that way of life, and richly demonstrates what a terrible loss that would be - for all of us. A fine achievement: describing the indescribable Exactly the book I've been longing to read about farming. A proper behind-the-scenes look, fascinating, insightful, compassionate. A long overdue account of the true nature of farming - written from the ground up. Bella Bathurst really gets under the skin of what it means to farm the land in the 21st century, at a time of unprecedented change.