Reseña del libro "Craftland: A Journey Through Britain's Living Past"
Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2025
Shortlisted for the Nero Non-Fiction Award 2025
The story of craft is the story of who we are.
Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our families, communities and regions. Craftland brings to life the vanishing skills, traditions and trades that shaped the fabric and governed the rhythms of everyday life in Britain for hundreds of years.
Through the stories of often humble-seeming objects of exquisite beauty, precision, utility and meaning, it shows how craft connects us to the land, emerging from local natural materials, and is the material expression of our regional identities and cultures. And through encounters with some of the last remaining master craftspeople at work today – weavers and wheelwrights, coopers and coppice-workers, boat-builders and bell-founders, silversmiths and watch-makers – we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could yet shape our future.
For as long as there are humans, there will be craft, ever evolving in response to changing technologies, environments and communities. Craftland is a celebration of that deeply necessary connection between our creative instincts and the material world we inhabit, revealing a richer and more connected way of living.
An impassioned and inspiring account of the extraordinary men and women still doing traditional artisanal work in Britain - Sunday Times, Book of the Week*
Craftland is a book that shimmers with love for a dwindling world of meticulous, patient labour … Lyrical … Deftly written and well researched - Guardian
Superb … A book with many highlights … [Fox] brings his critical intelligence to platform the usually silent process of mastering a craft. I read the book with admiration not only for the remarkable subjects individually, but also the human spirit that unites them all - New Statesman
If you want to know about Britain and yourself, read this book … This is a tremendous book that urges us – in spite of the seductions of crass modernity – to believe in the craftspeople, living and dead, who made us who we are. - Spectator
Meet the weavers, watchmakers and wheelwrights keeping Britain’s noble craft traditions alive … Fox effortlessly persuades the reader about the superiority of all things crafted - Mail on Sunday
Utterly enchanting - Amol Rajan, BBC Radio 4 Today
This hugely absorbing book is so full of stories of crafts and craftspeople and communities, and of creativity over the ages. It’s such an important story to tell and told so compellingly. Wonderful - Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse
A joy - Edmund de Waal
Beautiful, eye-opening and surprisingly moving - a treat to treasure - Lucy Worsley, author of Jane Austen at Home
