The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

Product Information

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. Its sweep is vast. 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. He also kayaks on the River Kennet from Aldermaston, in west Berkshire, to the point near Reading where it meets the Thames – a journey that takes him through the estate owned by Richard Benyon who, until 2019, was the richest MP in Parliament (Benyon lives in Englefield House, which dates from 1558, and which passed to his family by marriage in the 18th century; some of their money was made via the East India Company, too).

Crucially, and ambitiously, he argues that “Englishness has always been defined by the landed lords of England and fed in columns of hot air to the landless”: our old friend, nationalism as false consciousness. Globally, an imperial machinery of slavery and conquest both bankrolled and legitimised the “cult of exclusion” that kept the English off their own turf. At home, the “magical architecture” and seductive contours of the great estates lent that dogma a patina of beauty and grace. Meanwhile, poachers swung from gibbets, plantation slaves toiled and died, proud commoners became a cowed rural proletariat and, in post-industrial mass society, the heritage industry served up centuries of mass uprooting and intimidation as a glorious aristocratic legacy. Land became a “commodity alone”, “partitioned from the web of social ties” that truly gives it value. Most cultures in the world have at some point held the notion that land cannot belong exclusively to individuals.’ Meandering. Fascinating. Thought-provoking. In this part polemic, part wanderer’s journal, part history lesson, Hayes organises chapters loosely around particular trespasses he has committed, exploring the history of the land he seeks to access, the beauty of nature and the way words and laws are used to guard land that, arguably, should be common land.Additional functions – we provide users the option to change cursor color and size, use a printing mode, enable a virtual keyboard, and many other functions. Brilliantly argued, The Book of Trespass explores with clarity and courage an ancient problem in radically new ways . . . Hayes unearths the psychological preconditions that empower and legitimise these monumental inequalities This seems especially pertinent when those individuals are operating on purely commercial instincts. Basildon Park house in west Berkshire is set amid 400 acres of historic parkland – most of which is private territory. Photograph: Antonio Olmos for the Observer

Fences, wall and divisions of all kinds run through Hayes’s book – a gorgeously written, deeply researched and merrily provocative tour of English landscape, history and culture through the eyes of the trespassers who have always scaled, dodged or broken the barriers that scar our land. 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. In global terms, that’s an almost-unique dearth of entitlement. The length of public footpaths has actually halved, to around 118,000 miles, since the 19th century. Hereditary aristocrats still own “a third of Britain”, even though foreign corporations now run them close (and have colonised the iconic Wind in the Willows villages by the Thames). Hayes wants to understand not just how this theft of access happened, 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”.Before we reached Newell Plain, a keeper wearing the green and yellow Cornbury branding leapt out of a nearby tractor. “You’re trespassing! It’s not your place, what gives you the right?” Hayes questioned the law of trespass with his adversary. “This place is over 5,000 acres – how many do you own?” he asked. “F**k all!” came the reply. “But it’s just the natural law.” If it isn't clear already, Hayes is a strong advocate for increasing public access to land and a fierce critic of those in power who have found ways to take possession of public land and then fence it off to deny access. Generally it is a mild mannered approach he uses, seeking the elusive meeting with a wealthy landowner, but he does bare his teeth at the Daily Mail, so much so that it is hard not to see things from his way. The central message of his book is that everyone should have access to the joy of nature, and its mental and physical health benefits – a vision restricted by an elite circle of proprietors. “Areas of land we do have access to are basically nowhere near cities, or large conurbations,” he said, calling for public access to the green belt, which is “within easy access to 60 per cent” of the population. “Why do we exoticise nature as a holiday destination, or something you only visit on rare occasions? Why can’t it be part of everyone’s daily existence?”