Long Road from Jarrow: A Journey Through Britain Then and Now

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 & 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 & sounds strangely familiar with its mood of austerity, political turbulence, contentious north/south divide, global instability, the threat of extremism & war, food banks & 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 & Twitter. Walking on the corresponding days of the March, Maconie travels down the spine of England to meet with people with stories to tell & whose voices tell the stirring, funny, sad, complex, perplexing & entertaining tale of Britain then & now. He finds a country of huge diversity & difference, of natural beauty & urban blight, affluence & poverty, revival & decline. 

The journey reflects these contrasts, taking us through great cites & sleepy hamlets, quiet lanes & roaring motorways, along towpaths & branch lines, to the very heart of London, to see what welcome awaits in Downing Street & Westminster.