Once again, Stewart proves to be a captivating tour guide. As he clocks up miles, he covers a range of topics, from Highland dancing to Border ballads, his childhood in Malaysia to his days in Parliament (or 'the nuthouse'). He brings archaic languages and traditions vividly alive, wrestles with nationalism and nationhood and, in a poignant closing section, traces his father’s war years and last days ... Beautiful, evocative and wise, The Marches highlights new truths about old countries and the unbreakable bond between a father and son.
This is a tender book sheltering under a robust title ... How much Stewart regrets this growing apartness is hard to know from this account. The delight of it lies in his encounters with the specific rather than in ruminations about the general. He has an alert eye for the awkward detail – the things that don’t quite fit with the tone of a scene. It makes him an enjoyable and persuasive writer ... As well as a fine lament for his father, Stewart may have written the obituary of a social, military and political class.
...a sensitive exploration of what borders mean or don’t mean ... the book is held together by Mr. Stewart’s writing, with his short chapters moving skillfully from history to personal encounter and using the views of others as a counterpoint to his own impressions, as well as by his wide knowledge, his questioning mind and, above all, the character of his father ... it is the prose that carries the book during the weaker middle section.
The aim in all three sections is to bring the region ‘back to life,’ and to use its sights and sounds and histories as a means of asking what is involved when a person says he feels at home in a place. But what sort of place is he talking about? Although he does at one point traverse a region that is actually called ‘The Marches,’ the geography of the book is much better suggested by his father’s term “The Middleland’ … Because Stewart’s family has lived in this region for several generations, he enters it at the beginning of his book with a clear idea of what he hopes to find waiting for him. But from the outset things don’t go as planned … Stewart manages to deepen and broaden his focus on cultural heritage in the central part of his journey. His richest material flows from the conversations with people he meets along his way.
Stewart shows self-deprecating humor throughout, and his prose is always cool and lucid. But there is a lot of it. Just as I suspect that no reader has ever wished that Wordsworth had written more, so here too even the most loyal followers may limp in a little footsore by the end of the day ... The problem with The Marches is that, having crossed England coast to coast along Hadrian’s Wall — more than enough for most travel writers — Stewart then embarks on a series of further walks for some 1,000 miles. The accompanying map looks like a spider’s web. Much of what he later encounters is fascinating but not particularly germane ... Still, like Wordsworth, Stewart brings a humane empathy to his encounters with people and landscape.
Throughout the journey, Stewart demonstrates a deep historical understanding of the land and describes the flora and fauna that he encounters with the precision of a botanist ... Woven throughout the book are deep and careful reflections on the relationship between government and the people it serves. The author deftly connects the historical lessons from his travels to the current international environment ... Some of the places he visits are obscure and the level of detail is, at times, more extensive than necessary. But this reflects Stewart’s desire to engage completely with the environment he encounters.
