Mid-land

A cultural history, a memoir, a love letter and a reckoning

The English Midlands is the least eulogised part of these islands; the bit left over when all of the sharper, sexier regions have staked their claim. The butt of every joke, the blank space at the centre of the map. And yet. This is also a bellwether region, the canary in the national mine. The perfect symbol of an in-between nation at a very in-between moment in time. Shouldn’t we get to know it better?

Weaving between Birmingham's canals and the Black Country's battered high streets, Coventry cathedral and the ghostly underbelly of Spaghetti Junction, Mike Parker excavates the deep strata of a place that shaped him more profoundly than he ever acknowledged knew. Here is the Lunar Society and the Civic Gospel; 2-Tone and heavy metal; Enoch Powell and Benjamin Zephaniah; George Eliot and the Staffordshire Hoard; Mary Whitehouse and the Peaky Blinders.

But Mid-land is also something more intimate and more urgent. Running beneath the cultural history is a family story: two ageing, estranged parents on opposite sides of the conurbation; a godfather with secrets; a childhood split between Kidderminster and Paris, between aspiration and shame, between belonging and exile. As Parker walks the canals from Hartlebury to Leamington Spa in the aftermath of bereavement, the geographical and the personal converge into something unexpectedly moving.

This is a book about what it means to come from nowhere in particular, and why that might, right now, be exactly the vantage point we need. In the Midlands' compromise and muddle, their pluralism and lumpy centrism, are all the hallmarks of our national reality. If we could only accept that, it might just be the making of us.

Reviews

Praise for All The Wide Border…

‘I loved this book. Mike Parker weaves together a great deal of wide reading, hard thinking and soulful tramping in his funny, thoughtful and evocative investigation of the Welsh–English border.’ Jesse Armstrong

‘Delightful and perceptive … Poses searching questions about identity, culture and political power.’ Waterstones Books of the Year

‘A joyful canter through the Marches. Delightfully engaging. Blending history, literature and personal anecdote, Mike Parker writes with energy and wit.’ TLS

‘No-one maps the secrets of the UK quite like Mike Parker.’ Ayesha Hazarika

‘A brilliant, fascinating book; Parker is funny and lyrical whilst always choosing brutal truth over sentimentality.’ Miles Jupp

'Classic Parker – a delicious, learned tour through a fascinating place.' Tom Bullough

‘Genuinely great.’ Adrian Chiles

'I gobbled this up.' Jude Rogers

About the author

Mike Parker was born in England and has lived in Wales for half of his life. His other books include the bestseller Map Addict, The Wild Rover and On the Red Hill, which was shortlisted and Highly Commended for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing and won the non-fiction Wales Book of the Year Award.