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On Roads
In this history of roads and what they have meant to the people who have driven them, one of Britain's favorite cultural historians reveals how a relatively simple road system turned into a maze-like pattern of roundabouts, flyovers, clover-leafs and spaghetti junctions. Using a unique blend of travel writing, anthropology, history and social observation, he explores how Britain's roads have their roots in unexpected places. He visits the Roman role in the way our roads are numbered, the ancient sat-nav systems of China of 2600BC and the unknown demonstrations against by-passes in the 1920s, and ends up at the roots of today's arguments about road pricing and road rage. Full of quirky nuggets of history, "On Roads" also celebrates the often overlooked people whose work we take for granted, such as Percy Shaw, the inventor of the catseye, Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert, the designers of the road sign system, and Charles Forte, the entrepreneur behind the service station. These stories of our past shed light on hidden changes in our society, the relation between people and nature and the invisibility of the mundane. And - on subjects ranging from speed limits to driving on the left, and the 'non-places' where we stop to the unwritten laws of traffic jams - they have never been told together, until now.
312 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
10 people are currently reading
172 people want to read
About the author
Joe Moran
24 books47 followersJoe Moran is Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and is the author of seven books, including Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and First You Write a Sentence. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 17, 2010
It's proving to me a bit of a long journey. I have had recent unpleasant relationships with motorways and their peripheral appendices so suffer a mild form of traumatic unease that feels like a dull miasma whenever I open the book. This is very well researched book, well written (understated, with gleams and flashes of sharp wit along the ways) mainly about motorways in the UK, but structured to raise interesting cultural perspectives 'on roads'.
I have taken to skimming it, delighted to see it ends with the bottom of the M62 in Liverpool, my home town, where glow surreal strips on the flyover and projected iconographies of a city that does not exist anywhere - except at the end of a motorway, underneath a flyover.
It's a welter of usefully useless information as a bonus to more serious claims for gravity. Glad to see Eddie Stobart gets a look in, and deeply interested in the sort of facts I pass on to strangers at bus stops. Such as, of the 120,000 books published annually in Britain many will be pulped and those millions of words become 'shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can be used to make roads, holding the backtop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway customises about 20,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts.'
It's been fun to read. And like a good, sometimes boring journey will do, has detoured me to places I had forgotten about. Stopping for refreshment once I googled and found myself in the far northHighland roads, a different story entirely, and discovered there a book about the history of travelling shops...
I have taken to skimming it, delighted to see it ends with the bottom of the M62 in Liverpool, my home town, where glow surreal strips on the flyover and projected iconographies of a city that does not exist anywhere - except at the end of a motorway, underneath a flyover.
It's a welter of usefully useless information as a bonus to more serious claims for gravity. Glad to see Eddie Stobart gets a look in, and deeply interested in the sort of facts I pass on to strangers at bus stops. Such as, of the 120,000 books published annually in Britain many will be pulped and those millions of words become 'shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can be used to make roads, holding the backtop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway customises about 20,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts.'
It's been fun to read. And like a good, sometimes boring journey will do, has detoured me to places I had forgotten about. Stopping for refreshment once I googled and found myself in the far northHighland roads, a different story entirely, and discovered there a book about the history of travelling shops...
January 21, 2018
An entertaining and informative journey through the recent history of the British road system. I do recommend, especially to those who spend long hours on the motorways.
November 12, 2014
Towards the end of this book, Joe Moran mentions the use of pulped paperbacks as a constituent of modern road layers, for their sound-deadening qualities (plenty of unsold Mills & Boon under the M6 Toll apparently), and expresses the ambivalent hope that his own work won't suffer this fate. In fact, I found my copy in a remaindered book chain, but it deserves better anyway. If you're looking for an exhaustive or chronological history of the British road network, it isn't here. Moran mainly sticks to the post-war or 20th Century network, with a particular focus on the motorways, but I defy the casual reader not to find something amusing, enlightening or thought-provoking on every page. He has a talent for sniffing out the obscure histories and anecdotes of individual routes, the trials of their planning and construction, or the narrow point that illuminates an entire side of the story previously unconsidered. As a result, it is never a hardship to open up and read on. A dry subject? Not remotely.
Like many in current times, I hold no great fondness for driving and roads, particularly new schemes. However, I spent much of the mid-nineties in transit as part of my work and was surprised how much pleasurable nostalgia was invoked by Moran as he ranged over the topic. He is particularly strong on that archtypal 'non-place', the motorway service station, deftly showing how their early glamour turned tawdry and rundown in the seventies before transformation into the bland commercialised spaces and food courts of today. His recounting of the adventures of Julio Cortázar as he toured the autoroute rest stops reminded me of idle daydreams I used to experience while travelling, of a life lived in a campervan that would travel with imperceptible slowness along the hard shoulder of the motorway. I too have known the singular grimness of Birch services on the M62, little improved since the pitched battles between football hooligans forty years ago. Yet I've also eagerly anticipated a welcoming plate of sausage, chips and peas at Hartshead Moor to ease more than one long return journey from a day's work in Lincoln, when the staff are chilled out because the only customers are lone late night truckers in from the gathering dusk. I've tried and failed to resist an overpriced Mars Bar from the sterile branded outlets of newly refurbished services on the M5 and M6, giving in purely to alleviate boredom and delay my return to the entry slip. And who couldn't admire the Stingrayesque - and sadly redundant - tower at Forton Services on the M6, vying with the scenery to be the only other highlight of that antiquated, rumbling, screeching strip of concrete-surfaced road?
For my generation, the battles of Newbury and Twyford Down are recalled and, while both were lost, they symbolised the growing movement against new road construction that led to the termination of the original programme - and yet the sting in the tail is that it was later revived with much more stealth by New Labour, who initiated an extensive round of widenings, bypasses and 'improvements' far beyond the previous scope of work.
Perhaps the crux of Moran's argument is captured by his description of the M67 in the final chapter, with its incomplete 'ski jump' bridge at the Manchester end and its current truncation near Mottram, still contentious and unresolved. (A useful rail route across the Pennines was closed for the intent of completing this road, sadly it turned out for naught as the Woodhead tunnel proved unsuitable for conversion to dual carriageway.) We want the convenience and ellision that new, faster routes offer, but we recoil from almost every other aspect of their existence.
Like many in current times, I hold no great fondness for driving and roads, particularly new schemes. However, I spent much of the mid-nineties in transit as part of my work and was surprised how much pleasurable nostalgia was invoked by Moran as he ranged over the topic. He is particularly strong on that archtypal 'non-place', the motorway service station, deftly showing how their early glamour turned tawdry and rundown in the seventies before transformation into the bland commercialised spaces and food courts of today. His recounting of the adventures of Julio Cortázar as he toured the autoroute rest stops reminded me of idle daydreams I used to experience while travelling, of a life lived in a campervan that would travel with imperceptible slowness along the hard shoulder of the motorway. I too have known the singular grimness of Birch services on the M62, little improved since the pitched battles between football hooligans forty years ago. Yet I've also eagerly anticipated a welcoming plate of sausage, chips and peas at Hartshead Moor to ease more than one long return journey from a day's work in Lincoln, when the staff are chilled out because the only customers are lone late night truckers in from the gathering dusk. I've tried and failed to resist an overpriced Mars Bar from the sterile branded outlets of newly refurbished services on the M5 and M6, giving in purely to alleviate boredom and delay my return to the entry slip. And who couldn't admire the Stingrayesque - and sadly redundant - tower at Forton Services on the M6, vying with the scenery to be the only other highlight of that antiquated, rumbling, screeching strip of concrete-surfaced road?
For my generation, the battles of Newbury and Twyford Down are recalled and, while both were lost, they symbolised the growing movement against new road construction that led to the termination of the original programme - and yet the sting in the tail is that it was later revived with much more stealth by New Labour, who initiated an extensive round of widenings, bypasses and 'improvements' far beyond the previous scope of work.
Perhaps the crux of Moran's argument is captured by his description of the M67 in the final chapter, with its incomplete 'ski jump' bridge at the Manchester end and its current truncation near Mottram, still contentious and unresolved. (A useful rail route across the Pennines was closed for the intent of completing this road, sadly it turned out for naught as the Woodhead tunnel proved unsuitable for conversion to dual carriageway.) We want the convenience and ellision that new, faster routes offer, but we recoil from almost every other aspect of their existence.
November 16, 2023
A very enjoyable book - worth reading this and watching the BBC's excellent three part documentary The Secret Life of the Motorway.: . Certainly this felt like a breath of fresh air among the chuffing greenwash guff that gets pumped out in large corporations these days in their attempts to make their wage slaves feel involved in something other than their senior bosses greedy strategic machinations.
"Many Northerners will identify with Jan Struther's Mrs Miniver, who always felt a 'stab of excitement' when she saw the sign at the top of London's Finchley Road for 'The North'."
""Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean."
"Many Northerners will identify with Jan Struther's Mrs Miniver, who always felt a 'stab of excitement' when she saw the sign at the top of London's Finchley Road for 'The North'."
""Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean."
April 17, 2014
Moran is just a wonderful writer. He explores the topic of roads in Britain with his left-leaning French-influenced sociologist's insight, also taking in contemporary art, popular culture, political analysis and architectural and engineering history. Moran has an eye for exceptional characters and their life stories and weaves in a few of these unintrusively. He uses his clearly extensive research masterfully, crafting beautiful prose which I think should be mentioned in the same bracket as Sinclair or Sebald and hopefully in time will be. The chapter on motorway service stations is particularly poetic.
July 11, 2018
I struggled with this book: again an academic author too prolix to maintain my interest. Odd, because apart from the occasional academic jargon word, like 'intertextual', he uses ordinary language. But it feels like half a dozen articles that have been significantly padded out to make an over-long book. I know it's my perennial compliant, but it does get in the way of reading for pleasure.
October 5, 2020
Good book. Well written. Perhaps unsurprisingly the subject matter is a little dry at times and sections can feel ‘padded out’. But some really interesting facts, curiosities, commentaries and perspectives in here.
December 30, 2021
Who would have thought roads could be so interesting? This is a fascinating read and I'll be taking more notice of roads and roadside verges from now on.
June 15, 2022
Some interesting stuff in here; but I think touches the surface of lots of things that could be explored in more detail!
May 5, 2025
sheer joy for me, Moran's Sebaldesque immersion in the topic is transcendental
November 4, 2011
I’ve long been interested in social and cultural history, and there will always be a place on my shelves for books that illuminate the more unusual corners of history. On Roads is just such a book.
The British road system in the post-war years may not sound a particularly interesting subject for a work of history, but this is part of Moran’s point – roads are so commonplace that we hardly ever stop to think about them. What Moran suggests, however, is that the road system was a far more pragmatic creation than we might assume, and that the Brits’ relationship with their roads has, from the earliest days of the motorway, been an ambivalent one.
The sheer range of topics that Moran covers is remarkable, from road signs to service stations, caravans to roadside ecology. But, more than this, he tells fascinating stories (I had no idea that the design of British road signs had been so controversial) and makes some astute observations (such as that the image of the straight road has traditionally represented ‘cold modernity’ in England, whereas in America it’s a symbol of freedom and escape). On Roads takes an ostensibly ordinary topic and turns it into a rich and worthwhile book.
The British road system in the post-war years may not sound a particularly interesting subject for a work of history, but this is part of Moran’s point – roads are so commonplace that we hardly ever stop to think about them. What Moran suggests, however, is that the road system was a far more pragmatic creation than we might assume, and that the Brits’ relationship with their roads has, from the earliest days of the motorway, been an ambivalent one.
The sheer range of topics that Moran covers is remarkable, from road signs to service stations, caravans to roadside ecology. But, more than this, he tells fascinating stories (I had no idea that the design of British road signs had been so controversial) and makes some astute observations (such as that the image of the straight road has traditionally represented ‘cold modernity’ in England, whereas in America it’s a symbol of freedom and escape). On Roads takes an ostensibly ordinary topic and turns it into a rich and worthwhile book.
October 16, 2009
Just as most of us look back at the past and remark curiously that keeping bearded ladies in cages, eating veal and watching the Black and White Minstrel Show were once deemed to be innocent activities, so it will hopefully be the case that we will one day regard driving in the same way: as we sit on the edge of our own private islands amidst the terror of global apocalypse brought on by climate change that is.
This marvellous book is a classic socio-cultural history of the British M roads, full of fascinating anecdotes on the utopian stance of the 1950s, the transformation of our rural and urban landscapes and the anti-road movement it spawned. Sentimental, but never cloying, Moran's book tells you everything you would ever need to know about the subject including great sections on the history of the motorway service station (Morrissey is exposed as a devotee of such landmarks) and the battle over san serif typefaces on road signs. A global history would be a natural follow up volume and I will Moran to write it.
This marvellous book is a classic socio-cultural history of the British M roads, full of fascinating anecdotes on the utopian stance of the 1950s, the transformation of our rural and urban landscapes and the anti-road movement it spawned. Sentimental, but never cloying, Moran's book tells you everything you would ever need to know about the subject including great sections on the history of the motorway service station (Morrissey is exposed as a devotee of such landmarks) and the battle over san serif typefaces on road signs. A global history would be a natural follow up volume and I will Moran to write it.
September 25, 2011
Technically this was published in 2009, but I claim it by virtue of the paperback edition that came out this year. On Roads is that rare achievement of a poetic and fascinating study of that most mundane of things: the motorway system and major road network of postwar Britain. Teasing out the hidden dimensions to the mundane is in fact Moran’s USP as a historian, and his study ranges across (along?) the road, both as cultural artefact and as spine of the everyday Britain he wants to get beneath the skin of.
The heart of Moran’s enterprise is to understand the paradox of the road as, in his words “the most commonly viewed and least contemplated landscape in Britain”, things that we use all the time, but seldom think about, places that we visit frequently but never dwell upon.
The heart of Moran’s enterprise is to understand the paradox of the road as, in his words “the most commonly viewed and least contemplated landscape in Britain”, things that we use all the time, but seldom think about, places that we visit frequently but never dwell upon.
December 3, 2016
A very well researched account of the early history of the British motorways and social attitudes towards them - both love and loathing. There is a fantastic chapter on the rise and fall of motorway service stations and nadir they reached in the 1970s. There is also good stuff about the road numbering system. I particularly enjoyed the account of the history of anti-roads protests from the diversion of the M1 away from Charnwood Forest and the Oxford ringroad protests in the 1950s to the Chiswick Motorway Liaison Committee in the 1960s to Freestonia and the crushing of the London Motorway box in the 1970s through to the heyday of the Eco Warriors and Reclaim the Streets in the 1990s and how this led to profound changes in attitudes and in the way that roads were assessed.
February 7, 2015
I like books like this one. I'm reminded of Tom Standage's history of the world through its drinking habits (A History of the World in Six Glasses). The scope of Moran's books is narrower: a history of roads in twentieth century Britain. But, with surprising lyricism, Moran uses his subject matter as a launching pad for meditations on aspects of our humanity and aspects of Britishness. Along the way, there is fun to be had, with interesting facts and figures. For example, I was surprised to read that the conventions of British roundabouts were not set until the 1960s.
January 6, 2016
Certainly a well researched book, and I use that as praise rather than a sort of put-down. It does mostly focus on the motorway system, tracking its roots, history, development and even trying to nail its possible future. It is also well written in a very readable style. I found it a good mix of cultural reference and love/hate affair with something we mostly take for take for granted as we go about our lives.
November 17, 2010
A very well researched and written account of the peculiar British road network. Mainly focussing on the motorway system, it tracks its roots, history, troubled development and possible future. This is an unusual book and well worth reading for the insightful glimpse into our country's cultural association, affinity and distaste of the many miles of tarmac we take for granted each day.
to-read-5
June 29, 2009from How We Drive, the Blog of Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt: "It’s expansive, unexpected cultural history and in some ways an ideal companion volume to Traffic"
October 17, 2010
found a lot of my interests included all together on one lovely package. Well written collection of thoughts on roads, cars, there inventions and the cultural impact they have made on our lives. Recommended
July 6, 2015
I did eventually finish this fascinating book. It's a dip in and out but a really interesting read if you like this sort of history
October 6, 2015
Moran is expert in making the banal and mundane extremely interesting. Loads of asides, anecdotes, cultural references, biographical data as well as the history make it a great read.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews