Close to the Earth: Living Social History of the British Isles

First published in 1984, Close to the Earth is a record of a vanishing age in Britain, of working communities and working individuals who made their living from the land, the rivers and the sea. It is based on conversations and personal memories collected for over twenty years and is illustrated with many contemporary photographs of the times remembered. The people Judith Cook talked to—who among other things mined, fished, worked the land and brewed ale, and worked in stone and slate—lived...