Park and Ride: Adventures in Suburbia

by Miranda Sawyer

This is the Britain of motorways and heritage centres, of campaigning housewives and executive housing estates, of boy racers and Essex girls, of Cheshire wives and Scottish golfers. Readers are taken for an evening at a prestigious hotel night-club, a day in Britain's "most average town," a few hours with Staffordshire's jet-set, and a lovely Sunday drive to see the new B&Q on the bypass. This is not the Britain that is green and pleasant, urban and dangerous, historic and scenic—this is the rest of it, the vast swathes of in-betweeny land, the multiplexed, motorwayed, mind-your-manners, Great British Experience.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Society

320 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2001

About the author

Miranda Sawyer is an English journalist and broadcaster. She has a degree in Jurisprudence at Pembroke College, Oxford. She moved to London in 1988 to begin her career as a journalist on the magazine Smash Hits.

In 1993, she became the youngest winner of the Periodical Publishers Association Magazine Writer of the Year award for her work on Select magazine. She formerly wrote columns for Time Out (1993–96) and The Mirror (2000-3), and was a frequent contributor to Mixmag and The Face during the 1990s. She is now a feature writer for The Observer and its radio critic. Her writing appears in GQ, Vogue and The Guardian and she is a regular arts critic in print, on television and on radio. She was a member of the judging panel for the 2007 Turner Prize and the panel that awarded Liverpool its Capital of Culture status.

In 2004, Sawyer wrote, researched and presented an hour-long documentary for Channel 4 about the age of consent entitled, Sex Before 16: How the Law Is Failing. In 2006, she made a highly personal documentary for More 4 on abortion rights in the US, A Matter of Life and Death, as part of its Travels With My Camera strand.

Her first book Park and Ride, a travel book on the Great British suburbs, was published by Little, Brown in 1999.

She is also an occasional guest on the UK arts programme Newsnight Review on BBC2, The Culture Show (BBC 2) and also BBC Radio 2's Radcliffe and Maconie Show.

Reviews

[Plum-crazy · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I didn't find this book laugh-out-loud-funny I certainly sniggered a lot while reading it as I think anyone who remembers the 1990's will (white stilettos, turquoise mascara & Marbella-orange legs ring any bells?)

Sawyer's tales are amusing & she covers topics from wife-swapping to following the Heritage trail in the same wry manner.

I'd love to know what a reader from outside the UK might make of this take on British Surburbia :o)

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining (and even sometimes inspiring) look at the suburbs of Great Britain. Witty and incisive. 3.5 stars

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

hmmmmmm okay book. enjoyed it but it wasnt great yk

[Cathy Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is glorious and I loved it to bits. It's a fascinating look at surburbia, and doesn't rely on the usual stereotypes. Instead it looks at things in a bit more depth, from golf to swinging. It's also choc-full of wonderful, witty one-liners.
Written in 1999, it's also a prophetic look at what we have now become - the Trafford Centre is just opening, and in Preston, surveillance cameras are being put up in the streets. And what on earth is a Visitor Centre?!
This should have been a huge success and I wish that she had written loads more. She's like a sassier, funnier version of Bill Bryson.