The Marches

by Rory Stewart

In The Marches Rory Stewart walks a thousand miles across the north of England, crossing and recrossing the English–Scottish border. He discovers that, buried beneath England and Scotland, is another country, now lost, a Middleland with its own history, its own civilisation: a vanished kingdom.

Stewart sleeps on mountain ridges and in housing estates, in motels and in farmhouses. Following lines of neolithic standing stones; wading through floods and ruined fields, he traces Hadrian’s Wall with soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan. He interviews Buddhist and Christian monks, investigates arson attacks and heritage websites, and tries to get to grips with his tartan-clad father.

His book becomes a history of the Middleland, or ‘The Marches’. Britain, he argues, is an island whose natural boundaries are the sea, a nation split by a colonial empire that drew a line on a map, separating tribes and families.

The book is defined by a profound love of landscape, and walking, an unusual erudition, and an instinct for the most eccentric local histories. It draws on contemporary politics and on troubled borders, to illuminate the pattern of forgetting and remembrance that makes a very modern border and a very modern nationalism.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Scotland, Biography, British Literature

350 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 28, 2015

About the author

Rory Stewart was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Malaysia. He served briefly as an officer in the British Army (the Black Watch), studied history and philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and then joined the British Diplomatic Service. He worked in the British Embassy in Indonesia and then, in the wake of the Kosovo campaign, as the British Representative in Montenegro. In 2000 he took two years off and began walking from Turkey to Bangladesh. He covered 6000 miles on foot alone across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal -- a journey described in The Places in Between.

In 2003, he became the coalition Deputy Governor of Maysan and Dhi Qar -- two provinces in the Marsh Arab region of Southern Iraq. He has written for a range of publications including the New York Times Magazine, the London Review of Books, the Sunday Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times and Granta. In 2004, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire and became a Fellow of the Carr Centre at Harvard University. In 2006 he moved to Kabul, where he established the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.

In 2010 he was elected as a Conservative member of the British Parliament. In 2014 was elected chair of the Defence Select Committee. He served under David Cameron as Minister for the Environment from 2015 to 2016. He served as a minister throughout Theresa May’s government as Minister of State for International Development, Minister of State for Africa and Minister of State for Prisons. He ultimately joined the Cabinet and National Security Council as Secretary of State for International Development. After May announced she would be stepping down, Stewart stood as a candidate to be Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 2019 leadership contest. His campaign was defined by his unorthodox use of social media and opposition to a no-deal Brexit. He stated at the beginning of his campaign that he would not serve under Boris Johnson and when Johnson became prime minister, in July 2019, Stewart resigned from the cabinet.

On 3 October 2019 Stewart announced he had resigned from the Conservative Party and that he would stand down as an MP at the next general election. He initially put himself up to be an independent candidate in the 2021 London mayoral election but withdrew on 6 May 2020 on the grounds of the election being postponed due to COVID-19, saying he could not maintain the campaign so long against the big budgets of the Labour and Conservative campaigns. In September 2020 he became a fellow at Yale University, teaching politics and international relations.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've previously read both Stewart's "The Places In Between" and "Prince of the Marshes." I found both books to be illuminating and informational, as well as engaging. I felt that they really gave me an insight into the situations and cultures of Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively.

However I have to say that I don't feel that Stewart's change of focus in 'The Marches' works as well. Unfortunately, it also lessened, to a degree, my personal respect for the author.

The first problem, perhaps, is that this is very clearly the product of: "I'm setting out to write another book," rather than, "These experiences and thoughts I've had demand the writing of a book." It is admitted, several times in the text, that the author is having trouble getting that book together, and it shows.

The concept is: Since Stewart's "walks" across the Middle East were so productive, why not apply that modus operandi to his home, and walk across the border of England and Scotland, meeting people along the way and getting a sense of the people and culture(s)? The initial idea is to walk along Hadrian's Wall with his father, gleaning oral history from the older gentleman. Unfortunately, his dad was too elderly for the endeavor, and passed away before the book was completed. This means that the book ends up being sort of part memorial elegy to his dad, part musing on the history of the Border counties, and a large part complaining and disdainful jabs with a political edge regarding most of the people encountered along the journey.

The memorial part is nicely done, but honestly probably not of that much interest to most people who did not know the man (who does not come off as a particularly admirable person, though the familial love clearly shines through.)

I very much liked the idea of discovering 'hidden' bits of history in each town and obscure archaeological site. That aspect is the best of the book. There are many tidbits of information here which, for me, made the piece worth reading.

However, the third part - the attitude - was a huge disappointment to me. In Stewart's previous writing, he seemed very sympathetic yet fair-mindedly critical regarding all the people he came across. Here, his attitude reflects that of the book project itself: he had a preconceived notion of what he wanted to find and do, and is resistant and frustrated when the reality doesn't match those preconceived notions. Stewart has a ridiculously romanticized notion of rural British life, and is practically angry when he discovers that rural English folks and Scots are, well, modern people, concerned with their daily lives without secretly harboring old tales and traditions. Those who do love the old tales and traditions repeatedly come under fire from him for being inauthentic and inaccurate (this may be true, but one would think we could appreciate the passion and love these people have, regardless.)
A bizarre and insistent love of the quaint picture-postcard idea of British life repeatedly crops up, along with an adulation of sheep-farming. Farms and agriculture are regarded as a pinnacle of civilization, and the fight of Man against Nature in order to farm is granted a heroic stature. Environmentalists' effort to create nature preserves and let areas revert to a wild state repeatedly come under fire, because this would be at the expense of FARMS! Can't have that! These bits - and others - show a shocking inability for the author to be willing to listen, learn, or admit that anyone might know more about an issue than he does. After all, his ANCESTRAL ESTATE is here! This attitude is disturbing, considering that Stewart is currently Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (which shows why people keep insistently trying to explain things to him.) Overdevelopment of rural areas is certainly a valid concern, but when a major part of the ending of the book is a plaintive lament that a housing development will leave the aforementioned ancestral estate with ONLY a SQUARE MILE of property around it, and he just won't be able to remain on the family lands because that will just be so *dreadfully crowded*, he comes off as simply the worst sort of blindly, selfishly entitled aristocrat, genuinely out of touch with the concerns of the average citizen. Which is genuinely disappointing.

Many thanks to HMH and NetGalley for the opportunity to read. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think sometimes interweaving seemingly disparate threads can work well in non-fiction, unfortunately in this book I think it muddied the waters. Rory Stewart once did a walk across Afghanistan, which you can read about in his book, The Places in Between, which got a lot of acclaim. Much to my chagrin, he continuously references this journey and book throughout The Marches. At times he seems to be trying to find connections between Afghanistan and the borderlands between historical Scotland and England, but failing, in my opinion. He also seems to have written this book not long after the death of his father, and underlying everything is a clear desire to somehow pay tribute to his father. So also entwined in this narrative are reflections on his father's work in Asia. Too many ingredients, leading to very little clarity.

The only reason I actually read the entire thing is that this land is my land, as much as it is his land. A healthy quarter of my ancestry comes from the MacGregor lineage, a clan which lived in and/or bordered the land he is discussing, for centuries! Until the great migratory period between 1831 and 1931, where many people moved away (but not his family, except for working extensively overseas. This is when my Scottish ancestors came to the United States as well, to a very similar landscape.) So I found myself combing the text for more information on the history of the actual land, which is what I was hoping for from the book's description. From a few conversations he references with his Dad, I think that what Rory Stewart was assuming he would find was not as extensive as to fill a book, and as padding he has put everything else in. I would have preferred a shorter book with more focus.

Thanks to the publisher for giving me an early review copy through NetGalley.

[Maxwell]

Maybe this was too ambitious for me considering I don't read a lot of non-fiction that isn't memoir or essays. I thought this would be an interesting read about a man's life in conjunction with his findings on a long walk across the U.K. but it turned out to be a bit too tedious for me. The information is dense and the narrative is uneventful, so it was hard for me to feel motivated to read it. It took me over a week to read 50 pages because I didn't want to pick it up. It wasn't poorly written, just not for me. Honestly I think this kind of non-fiction works better for me in podcast or audiobook form.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

We tend to think of the UK as one complete country, but there are separate countries here that have their own distinct identity and outlook. This loosely defined border between us and the Scottish has existed since Roman times. Their farthest outpost, it suffered from marauding Picts and Celts who took every opportunity to give the Romans a bloody nose, hence why they built Hadrian’s Wall. It was this 200 year old monument that Stewart chose to walk as his first journey in this book. Some of the time he walked with his elderly father, though not the whole route, choosing to walk a short way before meeting elsewhere. Sometime he walk with soldiers, not long returned from Afghanistan, a country that he knew from a walk described in The Places in Between.

The second part of the book is a walk that he takes from his home in Cumbria to his father’s house in Broich. This 380 mile route takes him through the border country, or has he calls it, the Middleland. Mixing sleeping out on mountains staying in other accommodation, he takes 21 days to complete it, but it is as much a discovery of the landscape, region and the people that inhabit it and learning about its fluid and torrid past. His third journey is a metaphorical one; it is a celebration and tribute to his father, someone who was very dear to him.

It is a difficult book to classify, it is a travel book in parts and a history book in others and a homage to his father at the end. Parts of the book are really well written, my favourite being the Middleland walk where he crosses the political, cultural and geological boundaries of this borderland. It didn’t seem quite as focused as it could have been though. It was enjoyable though, and will be reading The Places in Between as I picked up a copy recently.

[Amy Durreson]

This is a fascinating and complicated book. I picked it up because I'm currently fascinated by the borders. I'm not close enough to go and walk the ground myself (always the best way to learn a place), but I was hoping that reading the account of someone who had might give me a sense of the land. It did, but it also offered me far more than that. The book is split into three stages: an attempt the author made to walk Hadrian's wall with his father (who, being then in his late eighties, met him at key points along the way), a later solo trek from his home to in Cumbria to the Solway Firth and then up the border, and finally a trip from Berwick to his father's home on the edge of the Highlands which leads into an account of his father's final days. Although his account of his walks explore the land he crosses and the people who live there, that knowledge is then used as a launching board to explore the experiences of the Romans who built the wall, the history of the borders, his own experiences in Afghanistan and elsewhere, his father's long career in the army and British intelligence all over the world and, of course, the relationship between himself and his father.

Stewart is a Tory MP, and it shows occasionally, in the occasional sideswipe at well-meaning conservationists making life hard for farmers and his preoccupation with the Scottish Independence vote. He eschews political soundbites, though, and one of the great strengths of the book is the way in which he interrogates his own assumptions about nationhood and identity. He sets out with a determination to find evidence of a Borders identity which transcends the differences between English and Scottish. What he finds instead is a lack of any coherent identity at all--the individuals he meets and describes so vividly defy this sort of simple categorisation, and you leave the book with a sense that he is profoundly troubled by this lack of connection to place or history. By the end of the book, he comes full circle, back to the individual and personal, to his own family and their loss, and to the invention of new tradition rather than the upkeep of the old.

I've seen reviews saying the book itself doesn't cohere well. Perhaps not, but I'm tempted to think that's rather the point. In that sense, in the lack of a single forward momentum, perhaps you could call it flawed. Personally, I liked it more for that lack.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

I enjoyed reading The Marches: Border Walks With My Father by Rory Stewart. He’s been in the news here recently, having stood for leadership of the Conservative Party, and has now formally stood down from Parliament to run as an independent candidate for Mayor of London.

But none of that has anything to do with why I wanted to read his book. It’s because of the subject – walking in the borderlands between England and Scotland, in the place where I live. And it’s not just about walking – he also muses on history, memory and landscape, all topics that interest me immensely.

This is a book of three parts – Book One: The Wall about Rory Stewart’s walk along Hadrian’s Wall in 2011, with his father, then aged 89 – his father walking for the first hour or so each day. They had intended to walk the full length of the Wall, from east to west, but after they reached the fort at Bewcastle they decided to abandon their plan (his father having reached his limits) and drive back to his father’s house, Broich, near Crieff in Perthshire. He writes about the Wall, the Roman occupation of the area, his father’s career, about nationality and clans, and reminisces about his childhood and his time in Afghanistan.

Book Two: Middleland, in which he describes his walk from coast to coast, a distance of about 400 miles, taking him 26 days, walking alone from his cottage in Cumbria to the Solway Firth, then crossing and re-crossing the modern border (established in the 13th century) to Berwick-upon-Tweed and then back to Broich.

I got a bit lost in his descriptions of the route, not knowing some the places along the way. But there are maps of his route that helped me follow where he went. He describes the landscape, the geology, sheep farming and land use, the people he met, their history and language and much, much more.

Book Three: The General Danced on the Lawn about his father, who died at the age of 93, before this book was finished. The whole book is permeated with his love and respect for his father, but this last section is all about Brian Stewart.

At the end of the Marches is a Chronology which I found very interesting, defining The Middleland before AD100 up to the present days. The Middleland is a term invented by Brian Stewart:

The geographical centre of the island of Britain. An upland landscape, whose core is the Lake District, the Peninnes, the Cheviots and the Scottish Borders, but whose fringes extend to the Humber in the south and the firths of Forth and Clyde in the north. A land naturally unified by geography and culture for two thousand years, but repeatedly divided by political frontiers. (page 339)

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I liked this book a great deal. Don't be fooled by the title this book is largely about Rory's close relationship with his father Brian Stewart.

It is a touching paean to the old man in the guise of exploring the history and landscape of the borderlands.

I contemplated giving it 5 stars because there are few books that I read at my age that can bring me to tears. Maybe if this book is in my consciousness a year from now, I will bump up to 5 stars.

If you are okay with a meandering narrative and just go with the flow, this was a rewarding journey.

[Anneliese Tirry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meer dan een verhaal over 2 lange wandeltochten, 1 langs Hadrian's Wall, 1 van aan het huis van de auteur in Cumbria tot het huis van zijn vader in Schotland, is dit boek een ode. Een ode aan de hoogbejaarde vader van de auteur (flink in de 90), een ode aan Schotland en meer nog aan The Marches, een gebied tussen Engeland en Schotland dat eerder in de geschiedenis als een aparte regio werd gezien. De auteur gaat ook op zoek naar de geschiedenis van dit gebied, de herkomst van de plaatsnamen, wat de Romeinen, de Vikingen, de Northumbrians, de Kelten, ... er deden en hoe dit alles verder leeft in de overlevering en de tradities. Hij ontdekt echter dat geschiedenis evolueert, dat niets blijft zoals het is en dat de mooiste tradities zijn die je zelf maakt.
Ik weet niet of ik auteur of zijn vader in de dagelijkse omgang sympathiek zou gevonden hebben, maar dat doet er niet toe. Uit elke zin blijkt de liefde en de eerbied die zij voor elkaar voelen en dit wordt zéér goed overgebracht en mooi verwoord. Wat een rijkdom om zo een relatie met een ouder te mogen hebben. Ik was, toen het onvermijdelijke gebeurde, ook echt ontroerd.
Aanrader dus, zeker als je geïnteresseerd bent in de geschiedenis van dit gebied in the UK.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

(FROM MY BLOG). Hadrian's Wall, constructed by the Romans from A.D. 122 to about 128, crosses northern England from Newcastle, through Carlisle, to Bowness on the Solway Firth. In 2010, I followed the wall its entire length on foot.

In 2011, Rory Stewart walked the same route, together with his 89-year-old father (the father driving far more than walking). The following year, he walked a more rambling, and much longer, route from the Lake District to his father's home at the foot of the Highland Line in Scotland, exploring the puzzling region between the Wall and the Scottish border, the region called "the marches" in medieval times, and which Stewart likes to call "the Middleland."

Mr. Stewart is best known in America as the author of a best-selling book about his 32-day walk across Afghanistan in 2002, The Places in Between. A graduate of Eton and Oxford, he has also served as a member of Britain's foreign service, working on issues in Iraq, Montenegro, and East Timor. At the time of his Hadrian's Wall walk, he had just been elected as a Conservative party Member of Parliament, an office he continues to hold.

He has now published his account of his 2011 and 2012 ramblings, The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland. But The Marches is far more than a travel document. Stewart is a keen observer of flora, fauna, geology, archeology, history and pre-history. Simply reading his account of the Hadrian's Wall walk made me realize how much I had missed, how unobservant I had been, how superficial my understanding of the history of the area had been.

Moreover, Stewart combines his trekking observations with a tribute to his father -- a man who was an amazing example of a certain vigorous type of polymath and adventurer spawned by the British Empire -- and a deeply moving, bittersweet testimonial to the unusually close relationship between father and son. The book begins with Stewart's memories of his father as a child, and ends with his father's death at 93 in 2015.

The book has a number of themes, including the tribute to his father's remarkable life, and they perhaps do not all mesh easily together in a single volume. But they mesh as well in writing, probably, as they do in Stewart's own mind.

One predominant theme, intended or not, is Stewart's love of Britain's "lived in" rural landscape. The small village, the stone fence enclosures, the sheep and cattle, the neighboring farms and farm houses, where everyone knows everyone. A certain coziness. After the Norman conquest, the Middleland area was cleared of habitation and reserved as royal forest for the king's hunting. Stewart looks on forest as a form of desert.

Modern agriculture, tourism, environmentalism, and reforestation are causing a rapid re-desertification, in Stewart's eyes. Small farms held by families for centuries are being combined into large mechanized agricultural businesses. The government is reforesting other areas, and environmentalists are undoing the farmers' work of centuries, returning the land to "non-invasive" species. Among the many undesirable effects, as Stewart sees it, is a significant depopulation: fewer people now live in the "Middleland" than at any time since the middle ages, and deserted farm houses abound.

Another theme is the unique nature of the Middleland. Stewart had set out on his Hadrian's Wall hike with some thought that the wall marked a separation between Scots and English peoples. His findings confused him, and he now feels that the people of the "Middleland" -- now defined as stretching from the Humber river to the Highland Line -- make up a distinct third culture, one containing a number of sub-cultures.

Stewart loves seeking out the etymology of place names, and notes frequently which areas of the Middleland have names deriving from Northumbrian (Germanic) roots, which from Norse roots, and which from Cumbric-Welsh roots. He points out that what he now calls the Middleland was, before and for some time after the Conquest, shared by a number of kings representing different language and cultural regions. Some of these distinctions still exist in local language and customs.

The book has an underlying mood of melancholy. Just as his father -- a fascinating, accomplished, and eccentric gentleman, who still liked to dress up in Black Watch tartans until his death -- gradually weakens and fades throughout the book, so the Middleland is losing its cultural distinctiveness. Stewart repeatedly finds that residents today -- even in small, isolated communities -- have little real organic connection to their history and traditions. Local festivals tend to be promoted by community leaders for the enticement of tourists. Matching the cultural loss, the scenic values of the area are dying, as land use changes force a return to a dreary, pre-agricultural uniformity.

"Two states now predominated -- suburban and abandoned -- increasingly at the expense of the alternative, a living countryside."

Stewart frequently contrasts this dying of customary Britain with the vibrant survival of local village customs he encountered during his walk through Afghanistan. I easily understand how Stewart has chosen the Conservative party. And yet, his observations and conclusions are never doctrinaire, never set in stone. He continually observes facts that mitigate against his conclusions. He continually modifies his conclusions. The Marches is a travel book and an academic study, never a political tract.

Stewart sums up his father's life, shortly after the old man's death:

"It was an attitude to his life, then, and a resilience. I was only half-conscious of the many ways in which he had modestly concealed how he was better than me -- in singing, in his languages, in his sense of engineering or art, and in his promptitude and energy in work. In the end, I felt, his legacy was not some grand philosophical or political vision, but playfulness, and a delight in action."

Playful, indeed.

""I prefer," commented my father when I shared this [a Scot's verse, written contemporaneously, about Robert Bruce's battles with Edward I] with him, "Edward's comment on toppling Balliol -- 'bon bosoigne fai qy de merde se deliver' -- isn't it great to push out a turd.""

Stewart's evaluation of his father feels entirely justified, but his self-deprecation not so much. I suspect his father -- who continued to call his son "darling" right up to the end -- was immensely proud of his son's accomplishments, and felt he was leaving his world in good hands.

I doubt if any American Congressman, of either party, displays the same sensitivity, the same curiosity, the same scholarship, the same sense of history. The same love of lengthy, solitary walking. Or indeed, the same playfulness.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a Goodreads winner of this book. I liked this book, but didn't love it. The history of Scotland and England was great, I enjoyed reading the historical tidbits thrown in the book but this book was not about the history but about a walk along Hadrian's Wall. The book is divided into 3 parts, the walk with his 89 year old father which is very interesting and what a wonderful person to be with. The second part is about a self journey which I found to be more difficult to read and the third is about his father again. Only a small part of this book is about the walk along the wall. There are some parts about Iraq, Afghanistan and the Vietnam War and some political ideas that get bantered back and forth with his father that leave the book disjointed and I found myself agreeing with the father. Overall it was an enjoyable read, the book had some random thoughts that appeared throughout the book when it may have been better to stick with the journey itself.

[Laurie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had an unexpectedly emotional response to this book making it difficult for it to fit into something as subjective yet inflexible as a numerical ranking. Stewart's prose is engaging and well paced; he is a knowledgeable and thoughtful man with a wide ranging experience of the world at a relatively young age. I found myself deeply, if reluctantly, engaged in the son's conversations with and reminiscences about his colonial era father. Partly I suppose because I never had the opportunity to talk so much with mine as an adult nor experience my father in his 'place' so to speak; which is the borders of Stewart's walkabouts. While knowing that we Hay's suffered the loss of our country during the Lowland clearances I truly enjoyed learning about the demise of 46 of my Hay ancestors at Naworth Castle as told by the descendant of another border family still living in the ancestral home.

What left me bothered a bit however is the general displeasure Stewart conveyed towards the current land use patters and lifestyles of the Borderers he met and spoke with. Politically he's a conservative (for which I will try my best not to fault him though I'd like to) and this came across in what I sensed was a disappointment that the country had entered the 21st century and that the Scottish lands are now bereft of small landholdings and bucolic landscapes. His father believes the best thing about Britain was her empire. Looking squarely at the present and towards the future isn't often pleasant yet perhaps it's a place for further focus from the author.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rory Stewart walks the border between Scotland and England, much of it along Hadrian's Wall. This is a fairly long book that contains a lot of historical detail about the region. The author's father figures in much of the book and is a very colorful character. A survivor of D-Day he served with Scottish brigades as well as having a career in the Intelligence Service all over the world.

Stewart discovers that most people living along the border are ignorant of its history or indifferent. Occasionally he meets some who know local history. But he realizes that this area has been in flux since Roman times. Now many residents are people who have relocated from other parts of England or Scotland. The book is a fascinating study of nationalism and made me realize how many of our ideas about nations and nationality are recent inventions, and more invention than anything else.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the north of England and Scotland's border region. I am likely to read more of Stewart's books on Iraq and Afghanistan. He is thorough, and has a sense of humor even when the topic is dead serious.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the "walking" book I've longed for. Mr. Stewart's walk combines history (Hadrian's Wall, the Romans, Picts, ancient Britons, barbarians), his relationship (and it's a sweet and loving one) with his father, and a really nice set of walks across what his father called The Middleland, defined as "the upland landscape that forms the geographical center of the island of Britain. At its core lie the Lake District hills, the Pennines, the Cheviots, and the Scottish Borders... ."

The descriptions of people he meets, land he sees, and what happened there before and what is there now make for interesting reading. And the story of his father and him from his childhood through adulthood is moving.

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Stewart’s The Places in Between and The Prince of the Marshes and liked them both. He has a conversational writing style and an eye for the telling details in both people and landscapes. The first book was a walk through northern Afghanistan in the dead of winter while there was a war going on, a trip so dangerous it was almost suicidal; if the Taliban didn’t kill him the climate certainly could have. From it the reader learns about the Afghan people, the flexible interpretations of the Islamic tradition of courtesy to strangers, and the ancient rhythms of lives that seem barely touched by the modern world. In Prince of the Marshes he recounts the efforts of Coalition civil and military forces to coax Iraq toward pluralism, democracy, and the rule of law. It was a colossal failure, despite hard work and good intentions, and Stewart has insightful descriptions of the people he met and worked with, the good and bad, capable and incompetent, the pragmatics and the dreamers. In both of these books some of the most memorable descriptions were of the professional disaster groupies who make a good living moving from one war torn country to another, rarely leaving their fortified compounds, holding meetings that never accomplish anything and writing position papers that no one ever reads.

By the time he wrote this book he was older and more settled. I would not be surprised if his family had not taken him aside and said, “No more insane adventures. If you want to take another trip, do it where there are laws and medical care and indoor plumbing.” And so, he took walks along the English-Scottish border.

The book lacks the sense of danger that accompanied the other two: no Taliban with itchy trigger fingers or getting mortared in an indefensible compound surrounded by terrified and ineffectual soldiers. In its place is history, a blood-red history of slaughter and destruction which lasted from the Roman invasion to the early 17th century. I had read about the Roman history of Britain, and I knew something about its modern history, but I knew little about the period in between, and was surprised by how dark that history was: Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, clan warfare, Border Reivers. There were no traditions or literacy or culture, but torture and murder seemed to be in everyone’s blood.

On a later walk the author moves back and forth along the border on a walking trip to his family homestead. He is saddened by the lack of continuity in the region; as people move around connections to the land and its past are lost. That is unfortunate, but hardly surprising (after all, 75% of American students cannot locate Israel on a world map). His dealings with non-government organizations in other parts of the world seem to have left him cynical about environmentalists with lots of enthusiasm but little understanding, armed with simple solutions to complex problems, and a messianic certainty that they are right.

Along the way the reader learns some interesting things about how man has changed the ecology of the borderlands. For instance, after World War I British army planning assumed that the next war would look like the previous one, and that they would need enormous quantities of wood to revet trenches. They looked worldwide for something that was hardy, fast growing, and able to tolerate the wet, boggy environment, and found it in the Pacific Northwest. Today, hundreds of millions of North American conifers are growing there, having displaced whatever native trees once grew in that area.

It is also a book about the author’s father, and his relationship with him. His father was certainly a remarkable man: soldier, scholar, linguist, diplomat, and intelligence officer, and he lived a long and active life. In some ways the last third of the book is an elegy and a memorial to his father.

I can see why some readers of Stewart’s other books might be disappointed in the lack of action and exotic situations in this one, but I found the history informative, and I enjoyed his descriptions of the people and places along the border.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read Stewart's two earlier books, one about walking Afghanistan and the second on his work in Iraq. His writing and his insights impressed me greatly.

This book describes two of his walking trips in the "Marches," the territory of the English-Scottish border(s), including much of the history of the area, going back to the pre-Roman era but mostly around Hadrian's and the Antonine walls which marked the extreme western boundary of the Roman Empire. There is a series of maps to follow Stewart's progress.

He was joined by his father for the first and was in e-mail contact with him for the second; the last part of the book becomes a remembrance of that man, a WWII soldier and, later, an intelligence operative in Malaya and elsewhere, extremely accomplished in languages as well as stealth, closer to his native friends than to the British.

In fact, all three sections have much to do with the depths (or lack thereof) of historical background for the countryside and for Rory Stewart himself. Stewart, now an MP for Northern England (Cumbria). His interest in the environment evidenced by his commentary on "improvements" made for the fauna of the midlands goes well beyond that of the usual hiker (of whom he saw very few) as he describes the hundreds of years of cross-border raids, cattle rustling, and murder that actually make the area very much like the lands and narrative of a Norse saga (Norsemen did populate a part of the midlands, but, of course, raided what became Scotland for many years.).

Altogether, I found the book fascinating and enjoyed the good fortune Stewart had in his relationship with his father who, in the text, is always calling him "Darling," querying his thinking, and adding his own experience to the mix.

Walter Scott plays a role in his romanticizing of Scottish history, the tourist trade, and the shallowness of present-day attachment to place; taproots are few, and actual knowledge of place, thin. Stewart compares this to his experience of Afghanistan in which the people are sensitive to the least bit of the past and have not yet been uprooted from their tribes and villages. The prognosis does not bode well though we must "get on with it."

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the travel book I thought I’d be getting. This is a book about fathers and sons. Rory’s dad was 50 years old when Rory was born. We discover that his dad was the second highest ranking official in MI6, the British spy agency. His dad is quite a character too as we discover on their walks along the English Scottish border.

The author is trying to understand the Border area. How can things be so different yet the same in this area. It defies his thesis. Lots of reflection on Scottish independence included too. We see the same conflicts here that we see in the American West between the people who work the land and scientists and outsiders with holiday homes.

A travel book that is also a family memoir and a heartfelt goodbye to an enigmatic father .

[Jo Walton]

This was a very strange book. I started off loving it, and then it curdled on me.

The trouble with a travel book is that you have to like the narrator. I liked Rory Stewart's father Brian, and this is largely a book about Brian. I started off liking Rory too, but the more time I spent with him the more the very high opinion he had of himself started to grate. There are some wonderful bits in this book, and I'm not at all sorry I've read it, but there's also a narrowness of perspective, a smug pettiness, that emerges slowly. I love the landscape he's writing about, I'm not at all averse to his thesis, but as time went on I felt more and more patronized.

[Michiel Vandenberghe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Al wandelend langs de Muur van Hadrianus en zigzaggend door de Engels-Schotse grensstreek filosofeert Rory Stewart over het verleden van dit fascinerend grensgebied, Schots nationalisme en zijn eigen ervaringen als diplomaat en politicus. Het boek is best een lange tocht met veel omweggetjes. De vele petites histoires en rake observaties die Stewart neerpent, maakt het geheel echter tot een erg fijn reisverslag.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, Rory. Growing up in the north-east of England I really wanted to enjoy this book, and although there are some fascinating insights I found it lacking purpose and direction. Continual references to his walk across Afghanistan and stretched attempts at drawing comparisons left my head rather scattered.

[David Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10. Part biography, part history and part travel guide, Stewart's description of his walks along the English-Scottish border are thoughtful and introspective. His writing is inconsistent at times and this can disengage the reader - details of the people he meets and the history of places he travels through are either too lengthy or too sketchy. His best writing can be found in the biographical sections when discussing his father, who appears throughout in conversations, offering insight on other topics or scrutinising his son's work. As always with Stewart, written with unique, sincere character, but somewhat muddled

[Crazytourists_books · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book was a real struggle. I found it boring, incoherent, a mess really. Three different parts, none of which deliver what's promised by the title. It makes me wonder why the author didn't adapt his writing when he found out that his original idea wasn't working.
If the whole book was like the third part, the last 50 pages that is, it would have been great (the third part explains the two stars).
If the title and the description of the book were different it might have had a better review. But unfortunately nothing works as is. At least for me.

[Emma Kim-Van Mullin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a fascinating history of the Middlelands which has made me want to read more local history. Enjoyed his questioning of what the Scottish border & nationalism actually is - which confirmed how modern both concepts are and how shallow their roots.

Most of the great walks I’ve done have been with my father in the Borders (or the ‘Middeland’ as Rory calls it which encompasses Northumberland, Cumbria & the Scottish Borders). So this book felt personal, although his father is very different to mine.

Got excited every time he recounted parts of his walk I was familiar with - particularly in the Lake District, around the Cheviots and Scottish border towns.

Was deeply moved by the third section about his father, although wasn’t too interested in the military history.

I would have rated it higher if I’d fully understood a lot of the history & the walking was dull at times.

[Zoë Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I struggled deciding how to rate this one, it was probably like 4.3 stars? lol anyway this book was very interesting, exploring ideas about national and personal identity through long walks around the English and Scottish border. Running throughout the book is essentially a kind of memoir of Rory Stewart's dad and their relationship, and I cried at the final section reading it - Rory is a beautiful and engaging writer!

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a human being I have often found myself dwelling in middle lands, border regions, contested territories on the periphery fought over by multiple parties, with complex views on identity and loyalty, and this book is about one of the ways in which this is the case through the author's walk, along with his late father (who sounds like he would be one of those funny but cranky old men full of stories and sharp-witted judgments), in the middle regions of Britain, an area that was first defined by Hadrian's Wall and the way that it made Northern England a military zone (as opposed to Romanized southern England), and that also includes lowland Scotland up to the Highland line.  The author's father lived almost exactly on that line, and the author himself as of this book's writing was a member of Parliament for one of the English border regions that includes the beautiful Lake District.  I have found my own travels and family history involved in precisely those same middle regions, having ancestors who were lowland Scot or part of that great diaspora of Scots and Scot-Irish who made it to places like Ulster and Canada and Western Pennsylvania.  

The book itself tells some complex tales about the shape and influence of history, the way that some insight can be gained into these practices based on surviving material and linguistic evidence, and the nature of different worldviews held by a great many people who lived and died in this long-contested region.  The author speaks somewhat skeptically of Roman imperialism and the failure on the part of the Romans to ultimately win over their native population and comments on the similarities between the way that Britons saw the invading Angles, Saxons, and Jutes and the way that those Angles, Saxons, and Jutes saw later invading Norsemen.  The author tries to uncover something of the worldview of ancient settlers in the Lake District as well as the language of the little kingdoms of the Strathclyde and Northumbria that long were between the core of Pictland and Scotland in the north and England in the south until they were joined in conflict for centuries.  And most of all the author ponders the loss of contact with the middleness he was seeking and the strange rise of contemporary Scottish nationalism and the possible future fate of the now peaceful border becoming once again the locus for future conflict in case of successful Scottish secession.

Marches are areas defined by their borders.  Regardless of how artificial such lines are, they create a reality by virtue of their existence.  Did the Romans build a wall to keep the Picts out or to keep the Britons imprisoned within as taxpayers?  Why were the middlelands during the Roman period so devoid of civilian settlements?  Would the history of Great Britian had been different if Northumbria or Cumbria or Strathclyde been able to maintain their independence from the realms to the north and south?  Is the British identity so meaningless that Scots are willing to potentially toss it aside for either or both their own ethnic/cultural identity (itself rather complicated) as well as a European identity?  To what extent does it still matter that one is from the middle areas between the core of England and Scotland, in that people are treated differently for being from those peripheral areas?  This book does not come up with a lot of answers, but it does pose a lot of fascinating questions and shows the author coming to terms with the aging and death of his father as well as the question of nationalism and identity, the worth of family farming and celebrating rural life and one's own personal history and wrestling with imperialism, all of which makes for a worthwhile and nuanced read.

[Booknblues · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was attracted to The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland because I had read two other of Rory Stewart's books,]and really enjoyed them. they were The Places in Between about his walk across Afghanistan and The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq about his time in Iraq. I felt that they were thoughtful and interesting books which provided insight about those nations during a difficult time.

The Marches discusses his journey with his elderly father along Hadrian's Wall and I had on my agenda to read Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences about a man walking with his mother and I thought this might make some nice comparative reading.

Reading through some reviews about The Marches, many noted that it was a bit of a mess and a hodgepodge of a book. Within the book Rory Stewart discusses with his father about how it is coming together and says:
have the first part—a Romantic, child’s view of Scotland and my father, played against our walk on Hadrian’s Wall. And I have the second part—my solo walk—where, to be honest, I think I got in a thorough muddle, and was bewildered by the people I met in the Borders, and their sense of their own country and landscape. But I haven’t got the third part. I haven’t got the upbeat part where I bring it all together and come to some kind of conclusion about what kind of country Britain adds up to today.’

To which his father responds:
‘Yes. Yes. I see that,’ he said. ‘You have got the Romantic beginning and then you’ve got the depressing bit . . .’

Rory does walk across England and Scotland at the border and meet many interesting people, he delves into history which is quite interesting, but this is all a patchwork, a bit of a crazy quilt.

Rory's father has a long history in the military as well as working in espionage and had a career in service to the empire. He is proud of that, but it is something that Rory doesn't quite understand.

Rory on the other hand in his wandering through the marches, regrets the decline of the small farmer and doesn't agree with bringing back the marshland which environmentalist are encouraging.

Through this hodgepodge there is one thing which stands out and that is the relationship between father and son and it is quite touching. His father calls Rory, darling and the reader can feel the deep love between them.

This book is indeed a bit of a messed up hodgepodge of a crazy quilt, but there are wonderful people and things to see along the way and there is this great gift of love between father and son.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Stewart's The Places in Between many years ago, enjoyed it, and thought I'd give this a try, since it involves a memoir of along walk, and one along Hadrian's wall at that, something I've always wanted to do.

Stewart is a very thoughtful writer and very mindful of the sense of place and the way that the landscape imprints itself on people. The book can be divided into three parts, the first being a walk along Hadrian's Wall built by the Romans. The second, a longer and much more interesting walk, follows roughly the current border between Scotland and England, describing the history of this little populated but fiercely contested area. I took a special interest in this section since he was walking through the areas that my infamous Armstrong ancestors lived in. The third part was mostly about the end of his father's life.

Stewart's father, Brian, is present throughout the book. In his early 90s as the book takes place, Brian Stewart serves as a bridge between the British Empire and Britain of today. A WWII veteran, a diplomat, and a high-ranking director of MI6 in the mid-70s. He was "Q".

Facing the end of his life, but not really dwelling on it as much as his son is, Brian Stewart offers advice and support to his son's efforts to find out how much history has shaped the borderlands and how much the current residents know about this tumultuous past. Results are mixed, and Rory Stewart is often left disappointed in the lack of sense of place exhibited by many of the people he meets. Yet there is still a toughness, resiliency and creativeness in the people that live in this area that anyone can admire.

At first I was a little put off by the intense personal story that absorbed much of this book, especially at the end. It felt like I was eavesdropping on something quite private. But by the end I felt it was a fitting tribute to a unique area in the UK, and a unique individual who embodied the borderland get-on-with-it spirit.

I hope Rory Stewart take many more long walks and writes about them.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

An ambitious project, to explore and perhaps define an intermediate identity between Englishness and Scottishness in what Stewart calls the Middleland, by walking from his home in Cumbria (northern England) to his father’s in the Scottish lowlands. It’s a Romantic idea from the man who walked thousands of miles across Afghanistan before governing a province in occupied Iraq and then becoming a Conservative MP and government minister, and to his credit, Stewart admits in the book’s closing section that he failed. It may be true, as he argues, that there is no geological or linguistic reason for the English-Scottish border to be where it is; it is an accident of history. But history is influential even though it is accidental, and while there may once have been a Middleland with its own identity, there is no trace of it on Stewart’s journey. British society has been mobile for hundreds of years, largely leaving the Middleland occupied by people without roots in the area. An imagined history is a powerful force, so while there may have been no kilts or Scottish Gaelic in the lowlands 200 years ago, they have been imagined into existence now. What Stewart seeks, he cannot find, making the whole exercise for the reader something of a slog.
Wrapped up in Stewart’s journey (journeys, in fact, since the first section of the book deals with an earlier walk along Hadrian’s Wall) is his relationship with his loving, formidable, elderly father. Stewart senior comes across as the archetypical late Empire establishment figure - a World War II veteran who went on to the civil service in Malaya, learned Asian languages and ended up as the real-life Q, or quartermaster, of MI6. When the younger Stewart stops walking and searching for something which isn’t there, focusing instead on his father in the last 50 pages, the book, perhaps ironically, gathers pace and turns truly moving.
Stewart is a workmanlike writer, a keen observer, a well-educated amateur historian, and a Romantic honest enough not to let his theory survive contact with reality. He is also a devoted son to a man who sounds like a wonderful father. It is as an eulogy to that father that the book works best.

[Thom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best read as one man's reflections on life as he rambles. It is not about a pilgrimage of any sort, really. The walk is the place and means by which Mr. Stewart is able to reflect on any number of issues of interest to him. Ostensibly in search of trying to define "England" as opposed to "Scotland" Stewart reveals the complexities of identity in a landscape in which those identities are quite malleable and grounded more certainly in more local and specific locales than any greater "national identity." Until even that seems to be falling apart as well. I enjoyed his delving into the local histories and his challenges to the stereotypes. I wished for a greater sense of a conclusion - but maybe there isn't one, and that's the (unsatisfying) conclusion.

[Mizloo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating history, but the author, a politician, does go on. And on. Probably he's as smart as he thinks he is, but that ego is consistently on full display.

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the beginning Stewart gives a little background on his father with whom he then sets out on a walk along the line of Hadrian's wall - that famous landmark that came to signify the edge of the Roman Empire in Britain (although his father was too old to really accomplish much hiking), but along the way he sheds much light on who the Roman garrisons actually were and who the people were who inhabited the land on both sides of the wall. In the second portion of the book he sets out by himself to walk from his home in the north of England to his ancestral home and father in Crieff on the edge of the Highlands. Along the way he tries to grasp the history of the people who lived in this volatile stretch of borderlands (with little success). Few had roots that went back more than a few generations, many had travelled and worked overseas. Along the way he observes the changing nature of the environment, the loss of the family farms and small-holdings and the increasing "wilding" of the landscape as environmental policies seek to turn hard-won farmland back into wilderness areas. While he notes the changes without commentary, one gets the distinct impression that he is not in favor of the environmental policies that are basically killing off communities and a way of life that has existed for generations.
Finally, after reaching his father's home and spending time with him, he has to come to terms with his father's death and the urbanization of the land surrounding their family holding. It's rather a melancholy ending but overall, the book is a tribute to his father with whom he was very close.