Vron Ware: Return of a Native - Learning from the Land

Repeater, 2022, Softcover, 492 pages, 20.5 × 14 cm

From a fixed point in the middle of English nowhere, Vron Ware takes you through time and space to explain why transcending the urban-rural divide is integral to the future of the planet. The English countryside is often seen as timeless, remote and shielded from the harshest problems of modern life. Yet, as Return of a Native reveals, it is to rural England that we must look for the roots of our current crises.

 Beginning and ending at a crossroads in north west Hampshire, with feet planted firmly on the soil, Vron Ware brings her experience of writing about racism, colonial history, war and feminism to show us how to look at the land in a new light. With one eye on the parish and another on the distant horizon, she leaves no stone unturned in this quest to understand how we humans arrived at this place. From Bronze Age ruins to the fall-out from Brexit, Return of a Native is an ecological reckoning with England’s future as well as its deep history.