The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

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Only later did he consider the astonishing effect just a few words had had on them; it was as if they were two puppets, and this stranger had simply yanked their strings. At the time, this was primarily to restrict the hunt saboteurs, but is used in the vast majority of protests of all flavours, from fracking, to animal rights, to war. Trespasser is the French verb meaning to cross over, which came from the Latin word transgredior, from whose past participle we get the English word: transgression. In a pivotal, and timely, chapter, Hayes links subjection overseas to servitude at home: “Slavery was an extreme version of a time-honoured hierarchy in England: its impetus was profit, its disguise was race, but its mechanism was class”. It takes us to the real Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle, to the largest brick wall in England, built for the ancestors of current MP for South Dorset, MP Richard Drax, describing how new money entered the English countryside from slavery and colonisation of the West and East Indies.

The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes | Waterstones The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes | Waterstones

To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. For all its exuberance and erudition, The Book of Trespass is unlikely to cross our culture-war fences. Land Value Tax gets a few mentions: I’m a supporter but this probably isn’t the book for trying to find the details of that debate.Children need to learn about dragonflies by having them land on their noses so that as adults they will find it abhorrent to see a Wispa Gold wrapper next to an orchid.

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

I was surprised that the English Civil Wars didn’t feature more prominently, a couple of references to the Diggers aside. adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.

But behind them lies a story of enclosure, exploitation and dispossession of public rights whose effects last to this day.

The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes

The Book of Trespass is his first non-graphic book – though the text is punctuated by his marvellous illustrations, linocuts that bring to mind the Erics, Gill and Ravilious – and in it, he weaves several centuries of English history together with the stories of gypsies, witches, ramblers, migrants and campaigners, as well as his own adventures. I was familiar with some of these themes in broad terms but lots of detail is brought to bear and I certainly learned a lot.

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. This is a law we need in England immediately, Communities have a right to have a say in the land they inhabit. Even with recent, grudging adjustments to the law, people in England have the “right to roam” over only 10 per cent or so of their native country, and to boat down a mere 3 per cent of its waters. For Hayes, Basildon Park house serves as one symbol among many of the way, down the centuries, land was effectively stolen from the people, its grand estates constructed on the back of their exploitation.