PRESTEIGNE: Mid Border Arts at The Assembly Rooms

Sunday 26th November, 2023

2:30pm

Event information

Mike Parker talks about his new book ‘ALL THE WIDE BORDER’

All the Wide Border is a funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England–Wales border: Britain’s deepest faultline.

Garlanded author Mike Parker has adored and explored these places his entire life. Born in England but settled in Wales, he finds himself typical of many in being pulled in both directions. His journey is divided into three legs corresponding with the watersheds of the three great border rivers: the Dee in the north, the Severn in the centre, the Wye in the south. Neither quite England nor Wales, the furzy borderland he uncovers — the March — is another country, encompassing some of our loveliest landscapes and our darkest secrets. A hefty schlep from everywhere, these are A. E. Housman’s ‘blue remembered hills’ — and ours too.

Picking apart the many notions and clichés of Englishness, Welshness and Britishness, Mike Parker plays with the very idea of borders, our fascination with them, our need for them, and our response to their power. In his hands, England–Wales border is revealed to be a border within us all, and it is fraying, fast.

Mike Parker’s last book, On the Red Hill, was 2020 Highly Commended by the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing and won Wales Book of the Year Award 2020. His first, Map Addict, was published by William Collins and has sold over 50k copies. It has been republished this summer, with lots of new material.

"I loved this book. Mike Parker weaves together a great deal of wide reading, hard thinking and soulful tramping in his funny, thoughtful and evocative investigation of the Welsh-English border.”Jesse Armstrong, creator of Succession and Peep Show

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