The Marches

The Marches is a book by Scottish author and politician Rory Stewart, chronicling his 600 mile-walks along Hadrian’s Wall and the Anglo-Scottish Border. For parts of his travels, Stewart is accompanied by his father, Brian Stewart, and their close relationship is at the heart of the book.

Plot

The Marches is divided into three books: ‘The Wall’, ‘Middleland’ and ‘The General Danced At Dawn’. The first narrates Stewart and his father’s 2011 travels through the landscape surrounding Hadrian’s Wall, and includes autobiographical discussion of both men’s lives. The history and historiography of the Wall often feature as subjects both of the narration and of the two men’s conversation as they travel. ‘Middleland’ recounts Stewart’s 2012 solo 380-mile walk from Cragg to his family home in Broich. His father, though physically absent for much of this leg of the walk, appears in emails, conversations and memories. This book of The Marches investigates the history of the Border ('the Middleland') and the medieval kingdom of Cumbria. While walking, Stewart encounters farmers of Norse descent, medieval towers and the landscape described by Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth, all the while testing his preconceptions about the artificiality of borders. ‘The General Danced At Dawn’ sees Stewart accompany his father to the Normandy Beaches, where he had seen action in the Second World War, and finishes with his death and funeral.

Publication

The Marches was first published by Jonathan Cape in 2016 and reissued as a paperback in 2017. It was launched with an event at the Centre for Policy Studies.

Reception

The Marches was critically acclaimed and received several awards. It was Waterstone’s Non-Fiction Book of the Month (October 2017), an Observer Book of the Year (2017), longlisted for the Orwell Prize (2017) and the winner of the Hunter Davies Lakeland Book of the Year (2017). The Times called it “bewitching”, Katherine Norbury described it as “travel writing at its best”, and Stuart Kelly praised it as an ‘engaging, intelligent and ultimately moving account’. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller.

References

This article "The Marches" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:The Marches. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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