Real England: The Battle Against the Bland by Paul Kingsnorth (9781846270413)

'Magnificent: one of the most important books I have read in a long time. Revealing, stirring and brilliantly written, it should be read by everyone in England.' Zac Goldsmith, Director, The Ecologist

We see the signs around us every day: the chain cafes and superstores that dominate our high streets; the decline of small farms and the loss of post offices; the headlines about yet another traditional industry going to the wall. Now, for the first time, here is a book that makes the connection between these isolated, incremental, local changes and the bigger picture of a nation whose identity is being eroded.

As he travels around the country meeting fruit-growers, lock keepers, stall owners and the inhabitants of Chinatown, Paul Kingsnorth records the kind of conversations that are taking place in country pubs and corner shops across the land - while warning us that, unless we act, such quintessentially English institutions may cease to exist.

Paul Kingsnorth has worked in an orang utan rehabilitation centre in Borneo, as a peace observer in the rebel Zapatista villages of Mexico, as a floor-sweeper in McDonalds and as an assistant lock-keeper on the river Thames. He studied history at Oxford University between 1991 and 1994, was arrested during the Twyford Down road protests of 1993 and was named one of Britain's 'top ten troublemakers' by the New Statesman magazine in 2001.

Paul has worked on the comment desk of the Independent, as commissioning editor for opendemocracy.net and as deputy editor of The Ecologist, the world's longest-running environmental magazine. He is also an award-winning poet, and an honorary member of the Lani tribe of New Guinea.

Paul has written for or contributed to the Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Le Monde, New Statesman, Ecologist, New Internationalist, Big Issue, Adbusters, BBC Wildlife, openDemocracy, BBC Radio 4, BBC Radio 2, BBC4, ITV and Resonance FM. He is the author of Your Countryside, Your Choice, a major report on the future of the countryside, published in 2005 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

Paul's first book, One No, Many Yeses (Simon and Schuster, 2003), an investigative journey through the 'anti-globalisation' movement, was published in six languages in thirteen countries. His second book, Real England, is published by Portobello Books in April 2008.