The Marches - Border walks with my father

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2017'This is travel writing at its best.' Katherine Norbury, Observer An Observer Book of the YearHis father Brian taught Rory Stewart how to walk, and walked with him on journeys from Iran to Malaysia. Now they have chosen to do their final walk together along 'the Marches' - the frontier that divides their two countries, Scotland and England. Brian, a ninety-year-old former colonial official and intelligence officer, arrives in Newcastle from Scotland dressed in tartan and carrying a draft of his new book You Know More Chinese Than You Think. Rory comes from his home in the Lake District, carrying a Punjabi fighting stick which he used when walking across Afghanistan.On their six-hundred-mile, thirty-day journey - with Rory on foot, and his father 'ambushing' him by car - the pair relive Scottish dances, reflect on Burmese honey-bears, and on the loss of human presence in the British landscape. On mountain ridges and in housing estates they uncover a forgotten country crushed between England and Scotland: the Middleland. They cross upland valleys which once held forgotten peoples and languages - still preserved in sixth-century lullabies and sixteenth-century ballads. The surreal tragedy of Hadrian's Wall forces them to re-evaluate their own experiences in the Iraq and Vietnam wars. The wild places of the uplands reveal abandoned monasteries, border castles, secret military test sites and newly created wetlands. They discover unsettling modern lives, lodged in an ancient land. Their odyssey develops into a history of nationhood, an anatomy of the landscape, a chronicle of contemporary Britain and an exuberant encounter between a father and a son. And as the journey deepens, and the end approaches, Brian and Rory fight to match, step by step, modern voices, nationalisms and contemporary settlements to the natural beauty of the Marches, and a fierce absorption in tradition in their own unconventional lives.

About the author

Rory Stewart

Product details

• Authors: Rory Stewart, Stewart Rory
• Publisher: Vintage UK
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 30.09.2017
• EAN: 9780099581895
• ISBN: 978-0-09-958189-5
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 23 mm
• Subjects: Children's and young people's books > Non-fiction books / Non-fiction picture books; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Cultural Studies, Walking, hiking, trekking, Social & cultural history, TRAVEL / Europe / Great Britain, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, TRAVEL / Special Interest / Hikes & Walks, TRAVEL / Special Interest / Family, 21st Century, Political leaders & leadership, North & North East England, Social and cultural history, Lowland Scotland and Borders, Lowland Scotland & Borders, Early 21st century c 2000 to c 2050, Political leaders and leadership, North and North East England