On the Road Again: A Curious to Z of British Isles

Britain is full of places with stories to tell, if only you slow down long enough to notice them. In this funny, thoughtful and deeply observant journey, Adrian Bleese travels through the back roads, villages, old airfields and overlooked edges of the country, looking for the stories hiding in plain sight. A road name, a church tower, a canal, a memorial, a strange corner of woodland, an old airbase, a rude sign, a cow with a ridged tongue: each becomes the starting point for history, memory, reflection and the occasional glorious tangent. The result is travel writing in the broadest and best sense. It is about place, myth, human folly and the pleasure of paying attention. Above all, it is about the world becoming more interesting the closer you look. Wry, elegiac and sharply observed, On The Road Again is a book about seeing: how we notice, what we miss, and how the stories attached to places shape the world we think we know. For anyone who has ever looked at a landscape, a building or a map and wondered what lay beneath the surface, this is a reason to pull over.