The Marches

October 31, 2016
The blurry geographic and cultural line between regions that have been (and might someday be) separate nations is explored in this ruminative travelogue. Stewart, an Englishman who grew up partly in Scotland and represents an English border district in Parliament, follows The Places In Between, his 2006 account of trekking across Afghanistan by foot, with this narrative of walking trips through English-Scottish border areas. Musing on the nature of frontiers, he ponders Hadrian's Wall marking Roman Britain off from the barbarian north; the Northumbrian lands where medieval Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse settlers uneasily coexisted; cross-border feuds that inspired Walter Scott's romances; and the separatist impulses surrounding the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. He also paints vivid portraits of the region's rich (though sodden) landscapes, and trenchantly critiques environment policies that try to return the human-scaled "living countryside" of 1,000-year-old grazing and farming terrain to wild bog and forest for the sake of biodiversity and carbon sinks. Stewart anchors his lively mix of history, travelogue, and reportage on local communities in a vibrant portrait of his father, who was both a tartan-wearing Scotsman and a thoroughly British soldier and diplomat. This is a subtle, clear-eyed, ardent case for the United Kingdom's future, one that recognizes cross-border divisions but deeply values ties that bind.

Starred review from September 15, 2016
The author's journey along Hadrian's Wall, which allowed him "to explore and answer questions about Scottish nationalism, Rome, Frontiers, and Empires."There are few authors whose books are automatic purchases, whatever the subject, universal or arcane. Stewart (The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, 2006, etc.) is just such an author, and here, he introduces his father to give us an idea of where he got his drive to fully understand the people around him. He is now a Member of Parliament living in Cumbria, England, while his father, Brian, lives in the family home in Scotland. Stewart's Scottish heritage is rich and deep; as he notes, his father "and all his father's father's ancestors, his father's mother's ancestors, and his mother's father's ancestors were born, lived and had died, for at least two centuries, in one tiny geographical area." This book began as a father-son walk to explore the Marches (the borderlands) and find the feelings that might foretell the outcome of the coming Scottish Referendum. His greatest talent is in getting people to speak to him and actually listening to what they say, a skill on full display in his previous books about Afghanistan and Iraq. Stewart saw a similar talent in his father when they lived in Malaya, where Brian--a fascinating character in his own right--worked in the colonial offices; he often left his post to travel around and get to know the indigenous people. The author notes similarities between the marches in Roman times and the tribes of Afghanistan and in Iraq. Taking a second walk without his father, he sought the true heritage of the lost "Middleland." Throughout, Stewart makes it a joy to learn every tree, flower, and butterfly, to explore where Roman forts stood, and to understand the ancient histories of the region. Another winner from a consistently engaging author.

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April 15, 2016

Stewart's The Places in Between received front-page coverage in the New York Times Book Review and has since sold more than 300,000 copies across formats. Now Stewart walks another place in between--the Marches, an area along the Anglo-Scottish border that's seen many a battle.

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