Two Degrees West: An English Journey - Softcover

Crane, Nicholas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140272364 ISBN 13: 9780140272369

Publisher: Penguin, 2000

Synopsis

'TWO DEGREES WEST encapsulates much of the best of Englishness; not only in the countryside and the people Crane meets, but in the very nature of his journey - maverick, inspired, crazed and wonderfully humane' - Mail on Sunday.

In an attempt to discover what that elusive concept, 'being English', means, Crane decided to become a stranger in his own land. Avoiding the well-worn tourist spots, he journeyed the entire length of the country along a straight line, from the windswept North Sea coast down to the edge of the English Channel. The land and people selected at random by this cross-section give a uniquely fascinating and highly amusing insight into English life.

About this title

Review:

In 1494 the first prime meridian was drawn through the Azores islands by the crowns of Portugal and Castile under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, as the two kingdoms wrangled over possession of the globe in the aftermath of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America. This artificial division of the earth became a feature of the subsequent trading of territories between rival kingdoms. By 1884, as a result of the British Empire's commercial pre-eminence, the globe's prime meridian was definitively drawn through Greenwich. By 1938 the line two degrees west was chosen as England's prime meridian running as it did through most of the country, from Berwick-Upon-Tweed on the Northumbrian coast to the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.

Guided by his Ordnance Survey map, Nicholas Crane's book Two Degrees West walks the longitudinal tightrope of this most manmade of geographical lines, stretching nearly 600 kilometres from north to south, never deviating more than a few metres either side of the meridian. The result is a diverse cross-section of England in the late 1990s, from the bleak agrarian world of Northumbria and the Pennines to the racial and urban hybridity of the Black Country. Two Degrees West is an idiosyncratic, offbeat travel book, offering a unique view on the state of the nation at the end of the 1990s. --Jerry Brotton, author of Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World

Synopsis:

What is England and who are the English? There is a line from one end of England to the other. This is the line of longitude - 2 degrees west - and it describes a cross-section through the country. The author follows this line as closely as physically possible on foot - terrain ranging from open moorland to urban back-streets. The line begins at Berwick-on-Tweed on the border with Scotland and runs south through the wilds of Northumberland and includes the Yorkshire Dales, Pennines, Birmingham suburbs, Cotswolds, Salisbury Plain, Dorset and Isle of Purbeck.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0140272364
• ISBN 13: 9780140272369
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384