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Frontierlands

Britain’s Survival in the Making
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Frontierlands

By: Hazel Sheffield
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

'Frontierlands' are Britain's forgotten places, ripe for reinvention. Once economic engines, they are the outposts that investors and the state have forgotten: silt-filled harbours, overgrown forests, sunken railway tracks and empty buildings. They are the symptoms of an ever more centralised country but they are home to local communities, and among these, pioneers, working together to repair and rebuild.

Through inspiring storytelling, acclaimed journalist Hazel Sheffield takes readers on a journey that begins at the edges of Britain and travels inward via hoardings and railway arches, factories, streets and neighbourhoods to our homes. Moving from the South West to Gateshead in the North East, from Lancashire to London and the South East, she introduces us to the people who are acting to shape their own futures - people with first-hand knowledge of the problems Britain faces and with clear ideas how to make things better.

This is a book of community spirit, regeneration, empowerment and hope. We will question our assumptions about the workings of the world and learn how we can build a different one, ready for the enormous upheaval on the horizon - challenging the frontiers of our own minds.

© Hazel Sheffield 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Activism & Social Justice Europe Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences World

Critic reviews

A compelling account of how derelict neighbourhoods and abandoned buildings have become a new frontier for community development, seedbeds of renewal, creativity, and social justice ... Read one page, and you will want to keep reading. In the end, you may want to grab a work belt or spade and create a “lifescape”, a renewed commons that is the basis of a flourishing social life. (Paul Hawken, author of Regeneration)
Wrapped within the beauty of this book is a clarion call for a deeper understanding of our most precious spaces and the people within them. Remarkable, exquisitely researched and acutely observed, it won’t leave me. (Lucy Easthope, author of When the Dust Settles)
This is not just a grassroots manual for 21st century survival – groundswelling and prophetic, it could be a startling blueprint for life in the 22nd. (Tom Nancollas, author of Seashaken Houses)
We've all heard a lot about broken Britain; Sheffield's informative, lyrical and uplifting narrative centres around those busily engaged in mending it. An all-to-often overlooked kind of kintsugi. This is a book for now, when so many feel jaded, worn thin and in desperate need of hope. (Kassia St Clair, author of The Secret Lives of Colour)
A lyrical and vivid portrayal of communities struggling to build ecologies of care, solidarity, and responsibility against interlaced histories of exploitation and exclusion. Compelling and deeply life-affirming. (Davina Cooper, author of Everyday Utopias)
This is the right book, at the right time…I defy you to feel hopeless or depressed about the world after reading this book. It's a battle cry, a playbook – and, above all, a warm and beautifully drawn portrait of determined, inspired humans – many of them women – creating positive and lasting change. (Isabel Berwick, author of The Future-Proof Career)
Hazel Sheffield's book is a warming remedy to the creeping nihilism many feel about the places where they live, and their power to have a hand in changing them. The resourceful communities, partnerships and collectives she encounters in Frontierlands are frequently only just getting started in building something and setting down roots, and their attempts and battles, laid out here with deep feeling, have the potential to get many more people to start claiming space - maybe even an entire generation or two. (Jen Calleja, author of Vehicle: a verse novel.)
Frontierlands is a handbook of hope and regeneration. We learn about the old ways that are being unearthed and reimagined for a very different future. We meet people who are rebuilding not only homes, neighbourhoods and organisations, but also relationships, ideas, and sprits. It is a book about collective vision and stewardship, born for such fractured times as these, and Hazel Sheffield — with her deep and wide knowledge of the alternatives to the status quo that are being built at the edges — is the perfect guide. (Elizabeth Wainwright, author and community worker)
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