Colin Ward was the historian of unofficial uses of the landscape. The ten essays in Talking Green cover environmental pollution, urban life, allotments, the uses of nature, land settlement, regionalism, squatting, small-holding, the green personality and the shires of Southern England. Together they provide discussion points for anyone interested in taking green politics further than climate change and recycling (important as these are). Colin Ward connects green politics and lifestyle to everyday living and working, always providing positive proposals for future living.
Colin Ward was the author of around thirty books on housing, planning, education, water distribution, transport and anarchism. These include a book on anarchism for OUP and Cotters and Squatters for Five Leaves. He died in 2010 and obituaries appeared in every broadsheet. Colin Ward 'made anarchism respectable, but not too respectable'. He was the editor of Anarchy magazine, joint editor of Freedom and the founding editor of the Bulletin of Environmental Education, as well as being a columnist for the New Statesman and the Journal of the Town and Country Planning Association.