We tell her that we’re merely enjoying the park, and then we turn the tables, asking her a few questions of our own – which is how we find out that she is the wife of a National Trust warden, and that she lives in a house in the woods.

The Book of Trespass : Crossing the Lines that Divide Us The Book of Trespass : Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

Since snobbery and deference have a big part to play in Nick Hayes’s exhilarating book, let’s start with the obligatory name-drop.She doesn’t fully smile at this – though whether this is because we outnumber her and she feels vaguely intimidated, or whether because she simply believes we’re being foolhardy, I can’t quite tell. We get a lot of requests for individual support and would love to have the time to respond to each request in full. With the same form you can also submit to the monthly non-member newsletter which goes out in the first week of the month. Inside it is an oasis of wet rot and green life, ferns and flowers, and as it apears on the page of my sketchbook it turns into a table-topped dormant volcano, a private Eden walled from the field by its bulky outer layer of crumbling cambium and hard bark", and some moments of pure comedy - such as the joyous description of his dog's ball-licking activities. We build and maintain all our own systems, but we don’t charge for access, sell user information, or run ads.

Review: The Book of Trespass - Landworkers Alliance Review: The Book of Trespass - Landworkers Alliance

But it also raises the question: why does it still matter so much to landowners if people cross their land? The Book of Trespass takes us on a journey over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. The main aim of the book is to illustrate how societal divisions such as class, race and gender have been driven and intensified by the divisions imposed between communities and the land they once had access to. Nick’s demand is that we should be ashamed, it feels almost like religious fanaticism – we must stand in white at each corner of the churchyard to be whipped for our sins before we can deserve to make society better. Hayes asks not just how the old shared culture of the “commons” gave way to absolute rights of ownership, but “why we allow ourselves to be fenced off in this way”.Trespass can be actionable through the courts, whether or not the claimant has suffered damage – but such cases are rare, and usually only brought to deter persistent trespassing, or where there are boundary disputes. Your right to protest is secured by Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, but for the last twenty years, if you do it anywhere but your back garden or a highway, you can be arrested and sent to jail.

The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

I loved Nick’s book for large passages, it challenged me and made me uncomfortable – and annoyed me a bit in parts. Each chapter contains his own illustrations and these came through beautifully even on my kindle, I’m sure the physical book looks lovely.This word was the French version of the Latin rapio, which leads us to the word rape, where our understanding of sexual politics is structured through metaphors of personal space and acceptable boundaries. Personally, I think guilt and shame has no part in designing a better future, they simply obscure and divide, I refuse to be held responsible for the actions of my ancestors. THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2021SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 2022Brilliant, passionate and political . To wander and to roam are implicitly connected with moral failings and the word ‘vagrancy’ has as much sense in morality as it does in legal cases concerning homeless people.

The Book of Trespass - Bloomsbury Publishing The Book of Trespass - Bloomsbury Publishing

Hayes often argues in an all-or-nothing revolutionary vein, with property rights as key to the “entire dynamic of elite power”. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book. Among the places he trespasses, sometimes camping out overnight, are Highclere Castle in Hampshire, home of the Earl of Carnarvon and now best known as the real Downton Abbey; Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, the seat of the dukes of Rutland; on the Sussex estate of Paul Dacre, the former editor of the Daily Mail; and on land, also in Sussex, owned by the property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten. Please take the time to explore our staff page hereto see who the most relevant contact for your enquiry is.I became used to the various reactions of landowners, or their representatives, veering from the snidely patronising to the outright aggressive, but sensed that because I had caused no damage, left no litter, this all seemed strangely incongruous to what I was actually doing. We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. When The Book of Trespass is published later this month, he and Guy Shrubsole, the activist author of Who Owns England? The Open Spaces Society has been defending our access t the countryside since 1865; it’s the home of William Morris and Octavia Hill.