Long Road from Jarrow
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  • Published: 20 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9781473553422
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 12 hr 22 min
  • Narrator: Stuart Maconie

Long Road from Jarrow

A journey through Britain then and now

Formats & editions
EBook
20 Jul 2017
Audiobook
20 Jul 2017
Paperback
15 Apr 2018
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Stuart Maconie walks North to South retracing the emblematic footsteps of the Jarrow marchers to discover what Britain is really like today.

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Long Road from Jarrow, written and read by Stuart Maconie.

In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their towns and industries. Precisely 80 years on, Stuart Maconie, walks from north to south retracing the route of the emblematic Jarrow Crusade. Following history’s footsteps, Maconie is in search of what Modern Britain is really like today.

Travelling down the country’s spine, Maconie moves through a land that is, in some ways, very much the same as the England of the thirties with its political turbulence, austerity, north/south divide, food banks and of course, football mania. Yet in other ways, it is completely unrecognisable; highstreets peppered with pound shops and e-cigarette vendors, smoothie bars and Costas on every corner.

Maconie visits the great, established and yet evolving cities of Leeds, Sheffield and London, as well as the sleepy hamlets, quiet lanes and roaring motorways. He meets those with stories to tell and whose voices build a funny, complex and entertaining tale of Britain, then and now. Written in Maconie’s signature style, this is a fascinating exploration of a modern nation that, though looks and sounds strangely familiar, has been completely transformed.
  • Published: 20 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9781473553422
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 12 hr 22 min
  • Narrator: Stuart Maconie
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About the author

Stuart Maconie

Stuart Maconie is a writer, broadcaster and journalist familiar to millions from his work in print, on radio and on TV. His previous bestsellers have included Cider with Roadies, Pies and Prejudice and Adventures on the High Teas, and he currently hosts the afternoon show on BBC 6music with Mark Radcliffe as well as weekly show The Freak Zone. Based in the cities of Birmingham and Manchester, he can also often be spotted on top of a mountain in the Lake District with a Thermos flask and individual pork pie.

Also by Stuart Maconie

The Nanny State Made Me
The Pie At Night
The People’s Songs
How to Survive on Tour with a Rock Band
Hope and Glory
Adventures on the High Teas
Pies and Prejudice
See all

Praise for Long Road from Jarrow

Footsore in spacetime, hiking simultaneously through memory and landscape, in Long Road from Jarrow Stuart Maconie shadows the defiant, desperate and dignified crusade of 1936 through a modern world where everything has changed except for the austerity, the poverty, the national and global instability, the worrying ascendancy of fascism, and the resilient decency of ordinary people. This is a necessary book; a necessary journey through English identity, and one which you’ll be glad that you embarked on. Now, yes, now is the hour.

Alan Moore

Maconie’s book is not only a heartfelt tribute to Wilkinson and the marchers, but a reaffirmation of the role of the personal within the political, and a rallying call for anyone stirred by the story of Jarrow

The Observer

The result is this rich, evocative book. Part travelogue, part history, part examination of a nation in flux. It is all a delight ****

Mail on Sunday, EVENT Magazine

With yet another conservative government refusing to budge it is hard to avoid Maconie’s conclusion that persuading the uncommitted is as vital as ever

New Statesman

A tribute and a rallying call

The Guardian

An insightful impassioned and witty voyage through Brexit Britain that serves as both travelogue and social commentary

Waitrose Weekend