It’s clearly great praise for a writer to be compared to both Alan Bennett and Bill Bryson. However, when these comparisons scream out at you (albeit politely) from the covers of a book, it sets an almost unfeasibly high standard for the writer to live up to. Fortunately, in Adventures on the High Teas, Stuart Maconie rises ably to this challenge. Adventures on the High Teas chronicles Maconie’s search for Middle England – where it is and what it actually means – as he criss-crosses the country by train. (As a non-driver who relies on trains to travel at least 1500 miles a year between home and university, I have a lot of respect for trains). Maconie is a fantastic writer. As he travels from town to town, it feels as if he is taking you on the journey with him, like some benevolent uncle, charged with entertaining his nieces and nephews over the summer. There’s a great balance of fun and information, with a few moments of poignant stillness, which helps to make the fun even funnier. The facts Maconie imparts are all relevant and add to the narrative, rather than being informational window dressing to pad out the story. One of my favourite facts in the book: “Leamington Spa is, according to recent socio-linguistic research, right on the border of the north/south divide over the pronunciation of Bath”. (This is mainly because I have a friend who is living in Leamington Spa next year, but I still like the fact). Maconie’s writing about the North/South divide is genuinely brilliant, in a way that I can only appreciate now, as a result of moving from Yorkshire to Bristol (term-time only). Even so, the topics within this book are so varied that there will be something for everyone, so, please, go and read it.
NB: Another great piece of writing about the North/South divide is ‘My North-South Divide’ by Laura Barton, an article from The Guardian, which can be found here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/12/laura-barton-wigan-southerner
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