Well, I'm just re-reading "Captain Swing" and - once again - enjoying a thoroughly researched, compassionate, articulate and readable account of the fate of the agricultural worker in Southern and Eastern England in the early years of the 19th century.

I have letters written by members of my own family in the 1830s - to another ancestor who emigrated to Canada in 1835 to get away from the misery of living in Norfolk - which corroborate the drudgery and harshness of agricultural life as described by Hobsbawm and Rude in "Captain Swing". It's a great book.