A Telegraph Summer Read

'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.' Daily Mail

'Highly researched and deeply thoughtful ... Bathurst peers under the bonnet of these lives and reveals things that rarely make it into print.' James Rebanks, The Times

'A fine achievement: describing the indescribable' Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows

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.