English Pastoral

James Rebanks, English Pastoral: An Inheritance (Allen Lane, 2020)

‘There is an old saying that we should farm as if we are going to live for a thousand years.’ (199)

English Pastoral tells the story of three generations of Lakeland farmers: the author’s grandfather, his father and the author himself.  Titled ‘Nostalgia’, ‘Progress’, and ‘Utopia’, the book is divided into three sections that largely correspond with the three main stories.  Rebanks grew up on his parents’ rented farm, but got on best with his grandfather who owned an upland farm.  After leaving home and studying at university, Rebanks returns to farming and takes ownership of his grandfather’s farm after the death of his father.  Both the grandfather and father stories are poignant and tragic.  Towards the beginning of the book (p.83), for example, in discussing the friendship between his grandfather and his friend called George, Rebanks gives a beautiful description of the culture of farming communities in the late C.20^th: 

These peopled lived insular, often deeply private lives focused on their work.  Their voices were rarely heard, because they sought no audience.  Their identities were constructed from things that couldn’t be bought in shops.  They wore old clothes, and only went shopping occasionally for essentials.  They held ‘shop-bought’ things in great contempt.  They preferred cash to credit, and would mend anything that broke, piling up old things to use again someday, rather than throwing them away.  They had hobbies and interests that cost nothing, turning their necessary tasks like catching rats or foxes into sport.  Their friendships were built around their work, and the breeds of cattle and sheep they kept.  They rarely took holidays or bought new cars.  And it wasn’t all work – a lot of time was spent on farm-related activities that were communal and more relaxed, or in the simple enjoyment of wild things.  My grandfather called this way of life ‘living quietly’. 

The overall story of the first two sections one of rapid social and environmental decline. Following his return to the farm, Rebanks sees an opportunity to reverse at least some of this declensionist narrative.  His utopia, however, is realistic and he makes clear that living on a farm is not escapism from the world: ‘But I’ve come to see that the reality of being a farmer is anything but an escape from the world; it is often like being a slave to it. 

Despite including the Christian meaning of the word ‘pastoral’ in its initial definition from the OED (‘concerning or appropriate to the giving of spiritual guidance’), the book has relatively little to say about religion.  Growing up the annual harvest festival played an important role in the life of the rural community, but efforts to promote Sunday School attendance were ignored.   Rebank’s grandfather, we are told, didn’t like the local vicar.  On p.164 Rebanks writes: ‘My father wasn’t much of a churchgoer, but he believed in something similar.  He thought that things should have limits and constraints.  He believed in moderation and balance.  And he died hating what had happened to farming.  He had seen enough of it to know it had become a corruption of all he had loved and cared about.’  In the final section of the book, it is a synthesis of science (ecology) and traditional farming that Rebanks calls for, rather than any religious renewal of farming.  But there is a deep element of spiritual renewal, alongside the social and political, changes that Rebanks calls for.