A review by halschrieve
Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe

4.0

Akenfield is an oral history project which charts the effects of industrial agriculture on the British rural worker. It is a superb study of the conditions of farmers in the early twentieth through mid twentieth century. Something that really stands out is the abject poverty many of the older residents remember from their youth, and the lack of schooling or literacy that characterized rural life. Additionally, I think the book makes clear that this poverty was not from time immemorial but resulted from the lack of ownership of common lands--and while technological innovation and the expansion of the state into the lives of poor people brought higher standards of living in some cases, the subsequent drive of young people into the cities was not uncomplicated.