Rory Stewart spent nearly a decade as MP for Britain’s most rural constituency, Penrith and the Border. As he came to know and love this part of Cumbria, he found inspiration in the beauty of its landscape, its rugged history as a frontierland, and in the spirit of its people.

Drawing on pieces originally written for a local newspaper, Middleland is an urgent and inspiring portrait of rural Britain today – a place caught in tensions between farming and the natural world, between the need to preserve and to grow, between local and national politics – as well as a timeless evocation of the history, people and landscape of Cumbria.

These are stories of beauty and ingenuity, which also show us what a better politics might look like.