The A303
Highway to the Sun
1st Edition
Published on 10. May 2012
256 pages
978-0-85720-327-4 (ISBN)
Description
'A nostalgic experience, informative, humorous, charming, but pervaded by the bitter-sweet scent of regret' Daily Mail
The A303 is more than a road. It is a story. One of the essential routes of English motoring and the road of choice to the West Country for thousands of holidaymakers, the A303 recalls a time when the journey was an adventure and not simply about getting there.
Tom Fort gives voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of Stonehenge to Roman roads and drovers paths, to turnpike tollhouses, mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history, geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way of life.
'Fort has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that, like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph
'A lovely book...At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British road' Guardian
The A303 is more than a road. It is a story. One of the essential routes of English motoring and the road of choice to the West Country for thousands of holidaymakers, the A303 recalls a time when the journey was an adventure and not simply about getting there.
Tom Fort gives voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of Stonehenge to Roman roads and drovers paths, to turnpike tollhouses, mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history, geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way of life.
'Fort has an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that, like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph
'A lovely book...At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British road' Guardian
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
05/2013
Simon & Schuster Ltd
€32.39
Article exhausted; check different version
Person
Tom Fort was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1978 he joined the BBC in London where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom for 22 years. He lives in South Oxfordshire with his wife and two of his children and has been travelling up and down the A303 for over five decades.
Content
- Cover
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Introduction
- 1. Ignition On
- 2. The Road to Manderley?
- 3. Heston Services
- 4. Dead Men and Algebraic Equations
- 5. Beasts, Body Parts and Horns
- 6. Mutiny and Flower Power
- 7. Ancestral Voices
- 8. Old Stones, Big Birds
- 9. Men in White Robes
- 10. Digging Deep
- 11. Wiltshire Horn
- 12. Grossly Disordered
- 13. The End of the Plain
- 14. All Knightly Deeds
- 15. Roman Ways, Bloody Assizes
- 16. Coaching Days
- 17. The End of the Road
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
- Copyright
