Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40991 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Customer Reviews

A remarkable achievement
Nicholas Crane again tackles an immense project...to walk the length of England along the line of 'zero convergence' or two degrees west. He allows himself a 2000m wide corridor which occassionally allows him into a village but not to the shop!

Crane describes the country and the people he meets, and provides a fascinating account of the heart of England little seen by even the English. It is generally a pretty bleak picture, of rural communities being destroyed by the need to work in towns and by big supermarket chains replacing the small community shops.

Crane is an extremely enterprising chap and travelling with him is quite an adventure. I enjoyed this book very much and can't wait for his next mad-cap project.

Delightful, daft, inspiring
A wonderful, thoughtful warts-and-all snapshot view of England as it is, and one of the most inspiring things I've heard for ages: Daft + delightful! This man knows the meaning + value of travel. His equipment list is minimal (and idiosyncratic!), but he fills out his needs with an impressive resourcefulness and engaging with *real people* the whole way. You come to suspect an irresistible personal charm and purposefulness behind the matter-of-fact account. His uncompromising following of the line is splendidly simple and impractical: This ensures a fair sample of the land, plenty of difficulty + incident, and is engagingly dotty enough to put people on his side all the time. His style, too, seems simple but proves highly addictive, with some great dry humour. Andrew Sachs delivers (as usual) a pretty-much perfect interpretation. Follow on a map for extra enjoyment and realism. Now I'm off to buy the book...

The most interesting andfun book I ever read
This is the first book I ever wanted to read more than once. 3 years since I bought it it's still my favourite book, and ever time I read it I still learn things about this very special country. It's about geology, geography, history, sociology, psychology, real people, humour, fun, daftness, politics, emotion of all sorts. It's stuffed with interesting facts and Nicholas Crane's superb dry humour shines throughout. I'd like to have him round for dinner!