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A review by rae_swabey
The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us by Nick Hayes
5.0
Completely fascinating and a joy to read, The Book of Trespass takes the reader on a journey through the history of land ownership and property law in Britain.
It’s a defiant stomp through the countryside, which, as the name suggests, pushes at the boundaries of propriety and received wisdom to question some of our cultural ideas about who owns our lands, who tells our stories and who dictates our ways of life.
It’s a journey that takes the reader through stately homes and gardens, across the Middle Passage, to the East and West Indies, into the Calais Jungle, to raves and boutique festivals, to Greenham Common and the Battle of the Beanfield, all the while hopping over walls and burrowing deep under the skin of our shared history.
This is a definitive story of our nation, its lands and the people who lay claim to them. It’s a study of our roots, our foundations. It is relentless in its quest for truth and its refusal to be dazzled by artifice. It is a beacon of clarity and truth in a country riven by borders and boundaries and division.
And the descriptions of the British countryside, undercut with an unfailing wit, charm and righteous anger, betray a profound love for the natural world. I defy anyone to read this book and not come away gently, but irrevocably, radicalised. I cannot recommend it enough.
It’s a defiant stomp through the countryside, which, as the name suggests, pushes at the boundaries of propriety and received wisdom to question some of our cultural ideas about who owns our lands, who tells our stories and who dictates our ways of life.
It’s a journey that takes the reader through stately homes and gardens, across the Middle Passage, to the East and West Indies, into the Calais Jungle, to raves and boutique festivals, to Greenham Common and the Battle of the Beanfield, all the while hopping over walls and burrowing deep under the skin of our shared history.
This is a definitive story of our nation, its lands and the people who lay claim to them. It’s a study of our roots, our foundations. It is relentless in its quest for truth and its refusal to be dazzled by artifice. It is a beacon of clarity and truth in a country riven by borders and boundaries and division.
And the descriptions of the British countryside, undercut with an unfailing wit, charm and righteous anger, betray a profound love for the natural world. I defy anyone to read this book and not come away gently, but irrevocably, radicalised. I cannot recommend it enough.