First published in 1984, Close to the Earth is a record of a vanishing age in Britain, of working communities and working individuals who made their living from the land, the rivers and the sea. It is based on conversations and personal memories collected for over twenty years and is illustrated with many contemporary photographs of the times remembered. The people Judith Cook talked to—who among other things mined, fished, worked the land and brewed ale, and worked in stone and slate—lived through an era which spanned man’s first flight and the first landing on the moon. Their way of life, which in many parts of the country had remained unchanged over the centuries, is fast passing from sight and memory. What Judith Cook succeeded brilliantly in doing is to record the stories of some extraordinary ordinary people, how they worked and how they felt, before it was too late.
