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“This book concerns GK Chesterton’s secret people, forgotten until war brought them forth as beings doing memorable work:

“But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.”

It is about village life and village problems but it is also an arrestingly written history of our rural civilisation through the last two centuries, bringing out the full force of the impact made by the Industrial Revolution on all sections of rural life. It shows the startling differences between the village of today, with its competitive structure, and the largely feudal, co-operative, village of 1750, waiting apprehensively upon the second wave of enclosures.

The problems affecting village life and rural development in a changing society did – and still do – largely reflect many of the general vexations of mankind. To assess them accurately the author faithfully presents the lives and actions of those who influenced events in those two centuries. Here are the lives Squire, Parson, Farmer, Labourer. Here is William Cobbett, the tribune of the people: George Crabbe, the poet-parson: Charles Kingsley; the wit: Sydney Smith: and Joseph Arch, who gave unity to the inarticulate labourers. Other chapters deal with the gamekeeper and poacher, with rural industries and crafts and with the slow influence of compulsory education on the village mind.

In a final chapter, E.W. Martin links the past with the present and assesses the losses and gains in real values, in a ‘rural balance sheet’. Absorbing to read as social history, treating of a way of life still dear to the heart of every townsman, the book also sets out for urgent consideration problems which it is no exaggeration to describe as affecting vitally the future of England.

17 pages of illustrations.”