Craftland: A Journey Through Britain's Living Past -James Fox

Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month for October 2026

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.