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A review by kizzia
All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between by Mike Parker
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Since I have lived on the Welsh/English border for the past 20 years and found Mike through his excellent book “On The Red Hill” last year I had the hardback of this on pre-order the minute I heard it was coming out. There’s always a danger with books you’re anticipating that they won’t live up to your internal hype but this one exceeded all the expectations I had for it.
It is a living history of place, person, and ideas. Built on his own experience, the experience of others both living and dead and mixing literature, politics, economics, culture and what it means to have an identity tied to the land you occupy the text asks as many questions as it answers, leaving you with a sense of have been on a journey without ever having left your seat.
Mike writes deftly, carefully, humourously and with a lightness of touch that belies the depth of his perception. In other hands the topics he discusses as he makes his way down the border would become a leaden polemic, in his they weave together to form a picture of this part of the land, and the people who live on it, that is at once bleak, beautiful and filled with hope.
It is a living history of place, person, and ideas. Built on his own experience, the experience of others both living and dead and mixing literature, politics, economics, culture and what it means to have an identity tied to the land you occupy the text asks as many questions as it answers, leaving you with a sense of have been on a journey without ever having left your seat.
Mike writes deftly, carefully, humourously and with a lightness of touch that belies the depth of his perception. In other hands the topics he discusses as he makes his way down the border would become a leaden polemic, in his they weave together to form a picture of this part of the land, and the people who live on it, that is at once bleak, beautiful and filled with hope.