The Book of Trespass: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us

Nick Hayes invites us to journey across England through the eyes of a trespasser and mediates on the fraught and complex relationship between land, politics and power.

By law of trespass, we are excluded from 92 per cent of the land and 97 per cent of its waterways, blocked by walls whose legitimacy is rarely questioned. But behind them lies a story of enclosure, exploitation and dispossession of public rights whose effects last to this day.

The Book of Trespass leaps over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. By trespassing the land of the media magnates, Lords, politicians and private corporations that own England, Nick Hayes argues that the root of social inequality is the uneven distribution of land. Weaving together the stories of poachers, vagabonds, gypsies, witches, hippies, ravers, ramblers, migrants and protestors, and charting acts of civil disobedience that challenge orthodox power at its heart, The Book of Trespass will transform the way you see the land.

Nick Hayes is an author, illustrator, print-maker and political cartoonist. He has published four graphic novels with Jonathan Cape and has worked for, among others, the Literary Review, Time Out, the British Council, the New Statesman and the Guardian. He has exhibited across the UK and lives in London.

• Dimensions 12.9 x 19.7 x 3.9 cm
• Author Nick Hayes
• ISBN 9781526604729
• Paperback Yes
• Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• No of pages 464