The book grew not only out of my own trespassing, but out of a desire to try and make the countryside more available to people without my privileges.

The Book of Trespass review – a leap over England Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass review – a leap over England

It was more a case of wanting to support my feeling intellectually that it’s the wall that is the crime, not the climbing of it,” he says.With a list of sensible exceptions, such as people’s back gardens, war monuments and MOD sites, the Scottish right to roam not only allows but encourages people to swim, paddle, camp and ramble through the beauty of its landscape. But what I did love is that Nick’s book is also a wonderful book about nature, about folklore; it’s intellectually powerful, blending thinkers from all sorts of fields. Segregation, which directs the mindset of race and gender, is a word whose Latin root means to be cast out of the flock, and which reinforces the prejudice that racial groups that can be distinguished by a line alone.

Book of the Week: The Book of Trespass | Idler Book of the Week: The Book of Trespass | Idler

Nick Adams has produced a lovely book that covers a huge amount of ground in a detailed and rigorous way without being dry and academic. When they do ask you to leave, you don’t necessarily have to retrace your steps; it is your right to leave at the closest available exit. The Open Spaces Society has been defending our access t the countryside since 1865; it’s the home of William Morris and Octavia Hill.

He has published four graphic novels with Jonathan Cape and has worked for, among others, the Literary Review, Time Out, the British Council, the New Statesman and the Guardian. I would have liked more poetry (although Hayes’s prose can thrillingly take flight on its own) – the incomparable John Clare seems to haunt every page without ever surfacing by name from the underbrush. There are bylaws around respecting National Trust land but I do not feel deep down that I’m doing much wrong by being here. There are, he tells me, groups out there who are interested in the idea of reparation; who believe that if more people knew the stories behind places like Basildon Park, they would be more exercised over the issue of land rights. Highclere Castle in Hampshire – where Downton Abbey was filmed – is among the sites where Nick Hayes has trespassed.

The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes | Waterstones

The basic thesis is this – that our private property laws in England are designed to exclude us from the land to which we once had a right and should have a right again. It’s so enveloping, and so soothing, I jump halfway out of my skin when a pheasant shrieks in the undergrowth. His book begins with the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932, an act of civil disobedience that may be one of the most successful in British history (it led to the creation of our national parks).Section 63 criminalises any gathering of twenty people or more who meet to dance to amplified music.

The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines That Divide Us

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. This information will never be shared with a third party For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Author and right-to-roam campaigner Nick Hayes trespassing on Basildon Park’s historic parklands in Berkshire. The book takes the classic nature writing template as its structure – person walks through nature, describing what they see, giving historical context to the landscape.Sign our petition to keep people in their homes Urgent action is needed to prevent even more people being pushed into homelessness. But behind them lies a story of enclosure, exploitation and dispossession of public rights whose effects last to this day. It sometimes gives the impression,however, of being dispalyed for its own sake or to fulfill the role assigned to it by a routine structure repeated chapter by chapter.