I've come across this author on a number of occasions - he's been recommended to me as both a writer and a speaker, a clear and engaging communicator who seeks to challenge the status quo of the management of our countryside and natural landscape. This is his latest, his third book and he is indeed a powerful writer able to share facts and details while also telling a story.

Landowners are paid billions of taxpayer pounds to be good stewards, Shrubsole says. And we are told that they are stewards of our countryside, the natural world. But, he argues, these same landowners have polluted rivers, drained fenlands, burned moorlands. They have introduced the grey squirrel and the pheasant which have decimated the indigenous species of flora and fauna.

In a very clear and compelling narrative, Shrubsole recalls his journeys across the country exposing bad practice and extolling those individuals and communities seeking to claim back the land so that we might all benefit from the wild places. 

This book is both shocking and yet unsurprising. It is a reflection on what feels ever-present in so many areas of society today. But he urges us - the little people, the non-landowners - not to accept the situation. There is an alternative, he says, with his concluding ten point plan of action to democratise landownership. Nevertheless it doesn't feel that simple.