The great disconnect

Divide: The Relationship Crisis between Town and Country

Anna Jones (Octopus, £16.99)

LOCKDOWN was arguably a good time for the countryside. A new front opened up in its perennial battle with city values and, now, more young people now want to live out of town. What, however, will they make of rural life? As the author explains, the gulf between the attitudes of her Welsh farming family and the hipsterish city of Bristol, where she works as a television journalist, has never been more difficult to cross. Incomprehension is laced with animosity on both sides.

She is ideally equipped to investigate the phenomenon. Numerous generations of her family have been farmers, never hugely prosperous— her grandfather took a second job in a stone quarry to make ends meet. She grew up in a bungalow, not a picturesque