Why do we envy nomads but treat Travellers so badly?

Oh for the open road! Who doesn’t want to abandon the suffocating suburbs – waking to an alarm at the same time every single morning, hearing brown envelopes pushed through the front door, filling the dishwasher, paying that damned mortgage – and head out for endless sunsets falling over infinitely empty land?

Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand as a woman who leaves her home behind after she loses her husband and her job and travels around the United States in a campervan, is predicted to win Oscar for Best Picture this weekend. […]

First published in The Spectator on 25 April, 2021. Read online here.

Photo credit (fair use): Frances McDormand in Nomadland credit: Searchlight Pictures