Two Degrees West: A Walk Along England's Meridian - Hardcover

Crane, Nicholas

3.93

121 ratings by Goodreads

9780670879281: Two Degrees West: A Walk Along England's Meridian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670879282 ISBN 13: 9780670879281

Publisher: Viking, 1999

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Nick Crane, author of CLEAR WATERS RISING, set off in the summer of 1997 on a quest to discover what it means to be English. He walked the length of England along the English Meridian. The English Meridian - or Two Degrees West - is a line running through the heart of England. From Berwick on the Scottish border it runs south to Dorset, meeting the sea on the dramatic cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck. On his epic walk he encountered the full spectrum of Englishness - its people and places. On open moor and dale, through post-industrial towns and sprawling suburbs, Crane makes his extraordinary walk with his life on his back and tongue in his cheek. The result is a thorough and entertaining examination of England and the English.

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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.

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