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This engaging history of rural England and Wales during the twentieth century looks at the role of the countryside as both a place of work and of leisure and looks at the many crises it has suffered during that time.
"The debate about Dr Richard Beeching will rage until the Second Coming – and probably beyond. But in Charles Loft's careful examination of the Beeching Report, we have as fine a study as we are going to possess in the meantime." – Peter Hennessy "Loft's great strength is his judiciousness. He understands the political processes and assesses them fair-mindedly. And his verdict will, I suspect, hold up better than any of Beeching's judgements." – Matthew Engel, Financial Times "Prepare to be impressed, shocked and saddened ... This is undoubtedly one of the best books of the year – a riveting read." – Railways Illustrated "Lucid, to the point, thought-provoking at every turn, Last Trains is a volume that everyone should read before making judgements about the rail closures of the Sixties." – Heritage Railway "Thoughtful and well-researched analysis." – Edinburgh Evening News *** During the course of the 1950s England lost confidence in its rulers and convinced itself it must modernise. The failing steam-powered local railways, run by Colonel Blimp, symbolised everything that was wrong with the country – surely the future lay in motorways and high-speed express trains? Along came Dr Beeching with his diagnosis, and suddenly branch-line Britain was gone for ever. The debate about the Beeching cuts has raged ever since. In this superbly researched examination, Charles Loft exposes the political failures that bankrupted the railways and lays bare the increasing alienation of bureaucrats from the public they were trying to serve. The result is a fascinating study of a nation grappling to come to terms with modernity.
This is the 45th Anniversary Edition of The Decline of an English Village. When The Decline of an English Village was first published in 1974, its appearance was greeted with immediate critical acclaim. As a young writer, born into declining village life, Robin Page's message simultaneously struck a chord and sounded a warning. Now, after forty-five years, it reappears with a new and updated introduction, in which political activist Robin Page exposes greed, political ineptitude, and social and environmental indifference as the driving forces behind the deterioration of village life and the communities around it. Robin Page transports readers back to a time when villages were founded on the value of community, and when people still worked the land in the traditional sense. He reflects and ruminates on his own experiences of rural life, raising sensitive topics, such as the intensification of farming, over-population, and environmental degradation in some of England's most beloved places. Robin shares his concern for the alarming loss of wildlife in England, and offers his own perspective on what he perceives to be the most pressing issues. His passion for English tradition, reflected through his involvement with the Countryside Restoration Trust, radiates from within the pages of this book, along with his enthusiasm for preserving the countryside and its wildlife. Throughout his life, Robin has observed dramatic changes in the way people live their lives. It's in this book that he reiterates the tragedy behind a countryside increasingly misused and abused in the name of urbanisation and industrialisation.
Organised into sections on society, culture, politics and the economy, and embracing subjects as diverse as women novelists and village crafts, this book argues that almost everywhere we look in the countryside between the wars there were signs of new growth and dynamic development.
"The Rural Life of England" is a description of different aspects of the rural life of Britain, as observed by the author during his numerous trips around the country. The author pays much attention to the domestic life of the Brits, their customs, culture, and life in nature. Different strata of society and people of different professions are presented in this book.
`This book raises the theoretical level of rural studies to new heights...the Handbook of Rural Studies will likely become a key resource on the bookshelves of the next generation of graduate students...′ - Gary Paul Green, University of Wisconsin-Madison `This Handbook powerfully demonstrates that rural spaces, rural societies and rural natures are at the very forefront of critical social science endeavour. Read this book, become a rural social scientist′ - Henry Buller, University of Exeter `An outstandingly comprehensive review of theory, research and the study of rural questions...an essential reference for students, scholars, politicians, developers and rural activists′ - Imre Kovach, Institute for Political Sciences, Budapest `This collection is an essential addition to any rural scholar′s library and will be a critical resource for both established rural scholars and rising graduate students interested in rural research topics′ - Peter B Nelson, Middlebury College `The Handbook of Rural Studies is a tour de force on changing rural people and places in a rapidly urbanizing global economy -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary treatment of "rural" available anywhere. This is absolutely must reading for social scientists concerned about finding a prominent place for "rural" in scholarly discourse, institutional analysis, and public policy debates on the political economy of space′ - Daniel T Lichter, Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University The Handbook represents the vitality and theoretical innovation at work in rural studies. It shows how political economy and the ′cultural turn′ have led to very significant new thinking in the cultural representations of: rurality; nature; sustainability; new economies; power and rurality; new consumerism; and exclusion and rurality. It is organized in three sections: approaches to rural studies; rural research: key theoretical co-ordinates and new rural relations. In a rich and textured discussion, the Handbook of Rural Studies explains the key moments in which the theorization of culture, nature, politics, agency, and space in rural contexts have transmitted ideas back into wider social science.
This book examines how rural Europe as a hybrid social and natural environment emerged as a key site of local, national and international governance in the interwar years. The post-war need to secure and intensify food production, to protect contested border areas, to improve rural infrastructure and the economic viability of rural regions and to politically integrate rural populations, gave rise to a variety of schemes aimed at modernizing agriculture and remaking rural society. The volume examines discourses, institutions and practices of rural governance from a transnational perspective, revealing striking commonalities across national and political boundaries. From the village town hall to the headquarters of international organizations, local authorities, government officials and politicians, scientific experts and farmers engaged in debates about the social, political and economic future of rural communities. They sought to respond to both real and imagined concerns over poverty and decline, backwardness and insufficient control, by conceptualizing planning and engineering models that would help foster an ideal rural community and develop an efficient agricultural sector. By examining some of these local, national and international schemes and policies, this volume highlights the hitherto under-researched interaction between policymakers, experts and rural inhabitants in the European countryside of the 1920s and '30s.