After the Ruins uses both official and unofficial records to explore a relatively ignored aspect of recent rural history: how the fields, farms, villages and market towns of Northern France were restored during the 1920s in the aftermath of the Great War.

Hugh Clout is Professor of Geography, University College London where he has taught since 1967. He was Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences from 1995 to 2004. He is one of the foremost geographical authorities on modern France and on the European Union in general.