The Lie of the Land

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Lost Rainforests of Britain comes a fierce expose of how private landowners wreck the countryside, and how the public can restore it. Britain’s landowners, we are told, are the rightful stewards of the countryside. They care for the land, they nurture it for future generations and for the good of all. But this is not true. In The Lie of the Land, Guy Shrubsole shows that a handful of large landowners are responsible for the destruction and degradation of many of our most important landscapes. This book paints a vivid picture of some of the most dramatic failures of land stewardship in Britain's recent history. But it also tells the story of the people trying to pick up the pieces – the small-scale farmers, community groups and members of the public who may not own land, but who nevertheless seek to be its custodians. The time has come to shed our deference to landowners and demand that they live up to their ideals of stewardship – or forfeit the right to own land. In overturning the ‘lie of the land’, Shrubsole shows that we can all become custodians of the countryside once again.