The Farm

A Richard and Judy Book Club Selection.
Shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award, 2005.

After 200 years of farming in Yorkshire, the Benson family were forced to sell up. They found, like so many other farmers, that big business was wiping out a way of life they had known for generations.

Farming had not come naturally to Richard Benson; he had fled to London long ago. But when he returned to help, he found himself caught up in memories of his childhood in the countryside. Recalling a lost world of pigs digging up the neighbour's lawn, love affairs among haystacks, and men who wrestled bulls to prove a point, he tells of the changing English landscape, of the people affected, and how his family adapt to a new life after being forced to give up their birthright.

©2005 Richard Benson; (P)2006 Orion Publishing Group Ltd