Others have toiled and we have entered into their toil…

Others have toiled and we have entered into their toil… The Potato Planters’, by Jean Millet, a 19th-century image of French peasants at work. Photo: Boston Museum of Fine Art.

Remembering Peasants: a Personal History of a Vanished World, by Patrick Joyce (Penguin £25.00 / €29.99; also available in paperback) Often in writing reviews a relevant passage in the Gospels will come to mind. This time from John 4:38 (in the familiar words of the Douay-Rheims version), where Jesus tells the disciples: “I have sent you…

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