A Place in My Country

A Place in My Country is part memoir, dealing with issues of personal identity, sense of place, loss and memory, but equally it is about a small Cotswold village in the early-21st century.

It was written as a work of non-fiction, but with the hope that it would read more like a novel. Whether it has achieved that is something that the reader will no doubt decide. Indeed it could be argued that the subject matter would have worked better in a fictional format, but the author decided that ultimately, it was more honest and more direct to write a book of non-fiction.

The book does have a subtitle, originally intended as In Search of A Rural Dream, and that dream, if there was one at all, was for the narrator to find a better sense of self and identity; in many ways the fact that this search took place in the countryside is almost incidental.

However, the author, whilst having no pretensions to being either a journalist or an academic, did want to tackle some of the many issues facing country people, of all backgrounds, but in particular those facing rural workers. House prices, the problems and benefits associated with 'weekend homes', the threats to the affordable and 'drinking' based pub, are just some of the issues that the book explores.

Equally, the book tries to compare two types of farming - the large scale profitable modern farming carried out by larger farmers and estates, and the smaller more traditional, mixed farms that once were much more common in the Cotswolds. Neither are easy. Arising out of a chance encounter with a struggling farmer of the latter type, the narrator clearly sides with what one might call the 'under-dog'. However the book tries to explain the realities, benefits and disadvantages of both types of farming, particularly with regard to the landscape, bio-diversity, jobs and housing. Clearly there is no doubt which type is more profitable to the farmer or landowner concerned, and it is for the reader to judge which is better for the English countryside (and, one might add, the English tax payer).

Even some of the best social historians working in the field or rural history have struggled to find an over-arching narrative to describe an ever changing English countryside, with a multitude of local conditions, community typologies, landscapes and economies. Indeed, most would probably agree that because of the very diversity that makes the English countryside so intriguing and engaging, it is impossible to do so.

A Place in My Country is not work of social history, and it makes no claims to be fully representative of the even one village in the Cotswolds, let alone the Cotswolds in general and certainly not of the entire English countryside.

A Place in My Country is a narrow snapshot, of a brief moment in time, seen through one writer's lens, of one very small corner of England, and is meant to be entertaining, funny and moving.

If the book makes people think more about the English countryside and the fates of the people who live there, then that will be an added bonus. The narrator has tried as much as possible to leave his own personal views to one side, and to create as much room as possible for readers to draw their own thoughts and conclusions. It's not a polemic, it's not a political book with a capital P, but it is one that the author hopes will provoke discussion about the sort of English countryside the English want to have, and what steps they might need to take to ensure its arrival or survival.