Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places

(Hardback)

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Description

There is a Britain that exists outside of the official histories and guidebooks places that lie on the margins, left behind. This is the Britain of industrial estates, and tower blocks, of motorway service stations and haunted council houses, of roundabouts and flyovers. Places where modern life speeds past but where people and stories nevertheless collect. Places where human dramas play out: stories of love, violence, fear, boredom and artistic expression. Places of ghost sightings, first kisses, experiments with drugs, refuges for the homeless, hangouts for the outcasts.

Struck by the power of these stories and experiences, Gareth Rees set out to explore these spaces and the essential part they have played in the history and geography of our isles. Though neglected and forgotten, they can be
as powerfully influential in our lives, and imaginations, as any picture postcard tourist destination.

Welcome to Unofficial Britain, a personal and occasionally fevered journey along the edges of a landscape brimming with magic and mystery, tragedy and myth; a story of Britain that gets cut from the narrative; a map of the cracks in the urban faade where unexpected life can flourish.

Reviews

Rees finds soul in these soulless locations, charting stories and encounters as rich as those found among rolling hills and chocolate box villages. A delight. The New European

"Should be required reading in every motorway service station coffee shop up and down this land" - The Psychogeographic Review

'You should read this book. It will make you stay up too late, laugh out loud, and then freak yourself out looking out of the window at the haunted-looking binbag blowing past Carpet Right in the dead of night.' -Michael Smith, author ofUnreal City

A wonderful ramble through the Brexit Britain of today warts and all. Elsewhere: A Journal of Place

Essential reading if you are interested in the urban wyrd and how folklore is mutating and developing in modern times. Folk Horror Revival

Unofficial Britain was my book of 2020 Paul Cheney, Half Man Half Book

Effortlessly combining urban folklore and personal memoir, history and psychogeography, road-trip narrative and gonzo journalism. - Ends of the World

A fascinating and sometimes unnerving book Shiny New Books.

Dry and often very funny Bookmunch

[] harnesses the personal and philosophical, offering thoughts that are penetrating yet always entertaining [] A fresh take on vistas some may too readily dismiss." Never Imitate

The mythical and the municipal collide in a weirdly compelling tour of Britains built environment The Financial Times

"An appreciation of quotidian, overlooked and sometimes grotty landscapes; part memoir, part 'hauntology', and a stiff dose of nearness and weirdness to counter the tweeness that afflicts some topographical writing."- Will Wiles, author of Care of Wooden Floors

Author Bio

Gareth E. Rees is a writer, journalist and musician, and founder of the popular Unofficial Britain website. Born in Germany, brought up in Scotland and the north of England, he lived in London for many years before moving to Hastings. The stories, modern myths and folklore of place have always driven his writing. He is the author of a novel and three non-fiction titles, Marshland, The Stone Tide and Car Park Life, published to rave reviews in 2019.