Description

‘An unforgettable and moving portrait of working-class alienation’ JAMES REBANKS

‘Utterly compelling’ REBECCA SMITH

‘This book has considerable political power’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Powerful… sheds light on liberal Britain’s betrayal of the white working-class’ OBSERVER

A BOOKSELLER BOOK OF THE MONTH

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I’m England till I die. I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m England till I die!

Mum’s marching through towns yelling slogans with the EDL. Billy’s in prison for armed robbery. And Nicola’s left holding the family photos, asking: how did we get here?

These Wild English follows three generations of a working-class family as they struggle with the forces reshaping modern Britain. Nicola’s mum grew up on a farm with seven siblings, part of a family the police knew well and the pubs knew better. But that landscape and community is long gone. As she navigates low-paid work and stormy marriages against a constant hum of economic decline, Mum begins looking for a new source of belonging. And the appeal of the far right will have consequences that stretch far beyond her family.

From the working farms of Cumbria to the windswept shores of Kent, via bleak barracks in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, this is a rare and tender reckoning with the love, rage, pride and loss of a community and a country. It will change how you see the divisions of our age.

Publisher Review

An unforgettable and moving portrait of working-class alienation that everyone should read – this will change the way you think about our country and its divisions. Raw, challenging and deeply touching – Wilding illuminates her family in all their complexity, against the divisive politics of our age. I read it in one sitting — James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral Powerful [on] how and why the heroes became villains … Wilding’s search to understand her mother’s drift to the Tommy Robinson right sheds light on liberal Britain’s betrayal of the white working class — Andrew Anthony * Observer * Utterly compelling. I couldn’t put this down! These Wild English picks you up and takes you on a journey that will leave you changed. It is a book full of heart and hope and, even when that hope is dashed against a changing political backdrop, it is remade again and again, as we all must do in a world where we cannot always see the bigger picture — Rebecca Smith, author of Rural This zesty, wonderful memoir … ought to win a prize — Robert Colls * Literary Review * Tells the story of three generations, from her grandparents’ farm in Cumbria to the scrapyards, banger race tracks and care homes of Kent. It is shot through with her family’s bootstrap fatalism, and fizzes with all the family love, joy and “crazy energy” of a souped-up Darling Buds of May — Paula Cocozza * Guardian * Every once and a while a book comes along that doesn’t need to beg or plead to be read, because the moment you open the cover you know it’s just too bloody good – These Wild English is that book. Our working-class experiences are not often documented, and when they are they are mostly by urban men, that is why this book by Nicola Wilding is such a refreshing surge of Cumbrian air, one minute warm and enticing, the next astonishingly brutal in its descriptions – Nicola has a poet’s palette for minute detail and an artist’s eye for the bigger picture, all brought together in a familial story as perfect as it is complex. Read it! — Natasha Carthew, author of Undercurrent and Rough Edges A gripping portrait of working-class alienation and fragmentation. It is tender and raw, angry and elegiac, deeply personal and profoundly political. And it gets closer to the truth than much of what has been written on the issue. — Kenan Malik * Observer * A fine, sorrowful book. It is a superb first-hand account of the splintering of a working-class rural family. Above all it is a clear-eyed portrait of Wilding’s mother; a determined, passionate woman whose pride eventually curdled into resentment — Joel Budd, author of Underdogs Remarkable for its visceral candour, its raw confessional prose … [the book] has considerable political power. It is at once a lament for the lost idealism of a postwar social democratic future that never quite came to pass, a denunciation of the effects of globalisation on the English working class, and an attempt to understand why her mother, ended up on the frontline of far-right street protests — Jason Cowley * Sunday Times * Nicola’s compelling memoir turns the lens on her own family as she tries to understand how good people, across generations, ended up doing damaging things to themselves and those around them — Will Smith, Book of the Month * Cumbria Life * THESE WILD ENGLISH is a tender, moving and richly complex portrait of a resilient working-class family in a changing country. Nicola Wilding explores a breakdown of community bonds, crises in the farming and social care sectors, and the appeal of the far right with rare courage and candour, blurring black-and-white narratives and refusing to provide simple answers. It is a testament to the thrilling messiness of human life and the eternal thirst for belonging — Nicolas Padamsee, author of England is Mine An unforgettable memoir — Book of the Month * Bookseller * A rich and tangled family history full of contradictions. This is a wild ride through a childhood of Angel Delight and Poll Tax Riots, scarred market towns and reviled barracks in Northern Ireland, intergenerational trauma and tough, fierce, wild women who just keep on getting back up — Jonathan Trigell, author of Boy A A microcosmic story of working-class alienation, it is a heart-rending debut about how the post-war trajectory of our nation affected some of society’s most exposed and vulnerable — Caroline Sanderson * The Bookseller *