Country Life cover art

Country Life

A Story of Peaks and Troughs

Preview
Try Premium Plus free
1 credit a month to buy any audiobook in our entire collection.
Access to thousands of additional audiobooks and Originals from the Plus Catalogue.
Member-only deals & discounts.
Auto-renews at $16.45/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Country Life

By: Giles Wood, Mary Killen
Narrated by: Giles Wood, Mary Killen
Try Premium Plus free

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $21.99

Buy Now for $21.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

The Nutty Idyll


Former townies Giles and Mary swapped city life for rural Wiltshire over thirty years ago, and they've each embraced it in their own very different ways.

Mary has happily traded sophisticated London salons for monthly lectures at the Farmers' Club, competitive school quizzes, church interactions and local Auction House sales. While Giles has immersed himself in the catastrophic consequences of conventional farming, his organic no-dig veg-patch, the increasingly disproportionate response by local landlords to harmless trespassers and the strange death of the village house martins.

For recent city escapees and indigenous country folk alike, Giles and Mary sift through the unhelpful dreamy myths and offer a practical reality, with robust back and forth on every aspect of life in rural outposts, including but not limited to planning wars, class wars, dog thefts, tree-felling fights, misunderstandings between incomers and natives and the role of the Heron Appreciation Society.

The much-loved Wiltshire couple share their combined, hard-earned lessons, so we can learn the secret skills of grumbling and bumbling our way towards a new contented country life.

©2023 Giles Wood and Mary Killen (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Cultural & Regional Nature & Ecology Outdoors & Nature Science Village
All stars
Most relevant  
The hilarious Giles. And how well written & entertaining the whole book was. I throughly enjoyed it. 5 stars!

Hilariously funny Giles!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.