Description
The book is about a father and son walking across the border between England and Scotland. The father is a former British intelligence officer and the son is Rory Stewart. The book is full of interesting stories about the people and landscape they encounter on their journey. The book is also a reflection on the past, present, and uncertain future of the United Kingdom.
An unforgettable tale.
National Geographic In
The Places in Between Rory Stewart walked some of the most dangerous borderlands in the world. Now he travels with his eighty-nine-year-old fathera comical, wily, courageous, and infuriating former British intelligence officeralong the border they call home.
On Stewarts four-hundred-mile walk across a magnificent natural landscape, he sleeps on mountain ridges and in housing projects, in hostels and farmhouses. With every fresh encounterfrom an Afghanistan veteran based on Hadrians Wall to a shepherd who still counts his flock in sixth-century wordsStewart uncovers more about the forgotten peoples and languages of a vanished country, now crushed between England and Scotland.
Stewart and his father are drawn into unsettling reflections on landscape, their parallel careers in the bygone British Empire and Iraq, and the past, present, and uncertain future of the United Kingdom. And as the end approaches, the elder Stewarts stubborn charm transforms this chronicle of nations into a fierce, exuberant encounter between a father and a son. This is a profound reflection on family, landscape, and history by a powerful and original writer.
The miracle of
The Marches is not so much the treks Stewart describes, pulling in all possible relevant history, as the monument that emerges to his beloved father.
New York Times Book Review
Related Products
