Long Road from Jarrow

In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched the 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their town and industries. Precisely eighty years on, Stuart Maconie retraces the route of this emblematic English journey, romantically dubbed the Jarrow Crusade, to chart how much Britain has changed since.

He moves through a country that is in some ways very much the same, one that looks and sounds strangely familiar with its mood of austerity, political turbulence, contentious north/south divide, global instability, the threat of extremism and war, food banks and football mania. But in other ways, it is hardly recognisable—a nation utterly transformed, with its pound shops, electric cars, e-cigarette vendors, boutique hotels, smoothie bars, tech start-ups and Twitter.

Walking on the corresponding days of the March, Maconie travels down the spine of England to meet with people with stories to tell and whose voices tell the stirring, funny, sad, complex, perplexing and entertaining tale of Britain then and now. He finds a country of huge diversity and difference, of natural beauty and urban blight, affluence and poverty, revival and decline. The journey reflects these contrasts, taking us through great cites and sleepy hamlets, quiet lanes and roaring motorways, along towpaths and branch lines, to the very heart of London, to see what welcome awaits in Downing Street and Westminster.