‘Land of Milk and Honey, Digressions of a Rural Dissident’ is the sequel to ‘Red Rag to a Bull, Rural Life in an Urban Age’. The author Jamie Blackett finds himself in danger of losing the family estate as his beef business finds itself in difficulties and the spectre of Brexit bears down on the farming community. Meanwhile he feels under threat from extreme environmentalists attacking the very concept of livestock farming and by resurgent Scottish nationalism threatening the break-up of the United Kingdom. The book is the heart-warming story of how he copes with the crisis by following the example of New Zealand farmers in similar circumstances and successfully switching the farm into dairying, embracing the new creed of regenerative agriculture. Through his struggle the reader comes to understand the crossroads facing the British countryside as it attempts to adapt to free trade after eighty years of agricultural subsidies. We are also guided through the complexities of the changes needed to reach Net Zero carbon and reverse biodiversity loss as he explores the current craze for wilding the land and puts many of its ideas into practice for the benefit of wildlife on the estate. Along the way he becomes an outspoken newspaper columnist and founds a political party with George Galloway in an attempt to break the stalemate in Scottish politics and defeat Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP in the Holyrood election. As in ‘Red Rag to a Bull’, the book contains humour, vivid passages of nature writing and numerous polemical digressions on a wide range of issues in the British countryside. Jamie will be familiar to readers as a freelance columnist writing for The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Spectator and Country Life and a regular commentator on GB News. AUTHOR: Jamie Blackett is a former army officer and a farmer on the beautiful Arbigland peninsula on the Solway Firth in Dumfries and Galloway. He is also an award-winning journalist and a regular columnist for the Daily Telegraph, Country Life and other publications. He appears regularly on television and radio as a commentator on politics and rural issues. His first book, The Enigma of Kidson has been adapted for the stage. Land of Milk and Honey is the sequel to his second book, the much-acclaimed Red Rag to a Bull. In 2020 he won the Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust award for journalism and his essay has been published in a short book On Wilding. Jamie is married with two grown-up children.
