Brian Short is an emeritus professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex. He has a longstanding interest in the rural landscape history and society of South-East England.

The book is beautifully constructed and the author is to be congratulated for providing such a detailed and comprehensive investigation of a wide range of secondary and primary sources.

• Introduction: writing food security in the mid-twentieth centuryPrelude: the 1930s and the origins and purpose of state intervention in farmingRural society on the eve of warThe arrival of the county committees and their structuresThe membership of the county committees and their role in farm surveillanceNetworking the rural communityDispossessing farmers in England and Wales during and after the warPower and tragedy: the sad case of Ray WaldenReclamation: environmental and landscape transformation 1939 - 1945Reclamation: the Fenland and coastal marshesWartime farming and state control in Scotland and Northern IrelandRepresentation, memory and fiction1945 and Postwar continuitiesContradictions in a countryside at war

Brian Short is an emeritus professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex. He has a longstanding interest in the rural landscape history and society of South-East England.

The book is beautifully constructed and the author is to be congratulated for providing such a detailed and comprehensive investigation of a wide range of secondary and primary sources.

• Introduction: writing food security in the mid-twentieth centuryPrelude: the 1930s and the origins and purpose of state intervention in farmingRural society on the eve of warThe arrival of the county committees and their structuresThe membership of the county committees and their role in farm surveillanceNetworking the rural communityDispossessing farmers in England and Wales during and after the warPower and tragedy: the sad case of Ray WaldenReclamation: environmental and landscape transformation 1939 - 1945Reclamation: the Fenland and coastal marshesWartime farming and state control in Scotland and Northern IrelandRepresentation, memory and fiction1945 and Postwar continuitiesContradictions in a countryside at war

Brian Short is an emeritus professor of Historical Geography at the University of Sussex. He has a longstanding interest in the rural landscape history and society of South-East England.

The book is beautifully constructed and the author is to be congratulated for providing such a detailed and comprehensive investigation of a wide range of secondary and primary sources.

• Introduction: writing food security in the mid-twentieth centuryPrelude: the 1930s and the origins and purpose of state intervention in farmingRural society on the eve of warThe arrival of the county committees and their structuresThe membership of the county committees and their role in farm surveillanceNetworking the rural communityDispossessing farmers in England and Wales during and after the warPower and tragedy: the sad case of Ray WaldenReclamation: environmental and landscape transformation 1939 - 1945Reclamation: the Fenland and coastal marshesWartime farming and state control in Scotland and Northern IrelandRepresentation, memory and fiction1945 and Postwar continuitiesContradictions in a countryside at war