Neither green nor pleasant

The old coaching inn on the green. The Sunday morning toll of church bells. The ducklings paddling on the pond. The soft sound of leather against willow. Nothing, absolutely nothing, defines England’s idea of itself more than the sleepy rural village. World events can shake our island nation. Population growth can swell our cities. Who knows, climate change could even sink East Anglia beneath the waves. But as long as the country’s villages stand true, then England is safe and we can all put the kettle on for tea.

Utter rot, says Tom Fort, in this timely, myth-busting march through English rural history. Racing through the ages on his bicycle, the travel writer and historian — himself ‘by inclination a village type of person’ — is at pains to decry our sentimental attachment to the rural idyll. The idea of the old, simple, pre-Fall rustic England may cling on in our hearts, but it’s a ‘deathly silent sham’.