Hunter Davies A WALK ALONG THE TRACKS First Edition
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Hunter Davies A WALK ALONG THE TRACKS First Edition
First Edition, first print hardback of A WALK ALONG THE TRACKS, by Hunter Davies and published by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Limited, London, in 1982.The book is in very good condition (Clean green cloth boards with gilt lettering on spine) with minor wear to the pictorial dust jacket which is price clipped (light creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no inscriptions.
Hunter Davies is the author of over thirty books which include such modern classics as the authorised biography of The Beatles and The Glory Game which is widely regarded as one of the best ever books about football, a behind the scenes portrait of Tottenham Hotspur and A Walk Around the Lakes. He has written several other walking books and also a travel biography of Christopher Columbus which took him to the West Indies and the Americas. He is also well known as a broadcaster and journalist and writes for the Independent, Sunday Times, Daily Mail and New Statesman. Davies also wrote a wry column about his daily life in Punch called "Father's Day", presenting himself as a harried paterfamilias. He has also written a biography of the fell walker, Alfred Wainwright, and many works about the topography and history of the Lake District.
In children's literature, he has written the 'Ossie', 'Flossie Teacake' and 'Snotty Bumstead' series of novels. As a ghostwriter, he has worked on the autobiographies of footballers Wayne Rooney, Paul Gascoigne and Dwight Yorke. The Wayne Rooney biography led to a successful libel action in 2008 by David Moyes, the manager of his former club, Everton. He has also ghostwritten politician John Prescott's 2008 autobiography, Prezza, My Story: Pulling no Punches. He writes a football column for the New Statesman magazine which is written in his trademark humorous, irreverent tone. A compilation of these articles was released as a book, The Fan, in 2005. Davies writes 'Confessions of a Collector' in The Guardian's Weekend colour magazine. He has written a book about his collections with the same title. He is married to the novelist and biographer Margaret Forster.
From the Somerset and Dorset to the Ally Pally Railway, from the Wye Valley to the Deeside Line, Walk Along the Tracks is a vivid account of a unique journey recapturing the glories of the railway age.
"After the success of his Walk Along the Wall and A Walk Around the Lakes, Hunter Davies now turns his boots and his pen to walking along Britain's old railway tracks, and it's the most original and the most exciting walk he has made, not just as a piece of nostalgia, invoking memories of a bygone age, but also revealing one of our greatest natural heritages for generations to come.
In 1942, at the height of the railway age, there were 19,000 miles of track in Britain and 7,000 stations. Now there are only 10,000 miles left and 2,000 stations. But the result is almost 8,000 miles of disused railway lines waiting to be explored.
Old railways don't fade away - they turn into unique nature reserves. While chemicals have killed almost all natural life on either side of the railways, the embankments have always had their own plant and animal life. In the last decade, much of this life has been left completely undisturbed, allowed to grow wild, unmolested, unseen.
In many cases, the old lines have been sold to local councils. The more imaginative of them have turned the lines into country walks, open to the public, although often the public have been unaware of this. It's a minor miracle, the reclaiming of this countryside for public use, but so far it has been largely unsung. It has also happened in towns - in North London, there is a four-mile stretch, a botanical corridor, which is about to be made officially open, after a decade of rows and protests and a Public Enquiry.
Hunter Davies has chosen ten old railway lines in different parts of the country, and describes his adventures in his usual perceptive and witty way, recapturing the glories of the railway age. It is a world he knows well, as the author of the biography of George Stephenson, and he also describes the lives of the people who live along the tracks, making an unusual cross-section of British life. One of the people he found who just happened to live beside an old railway line, was none other than Lord Beeching. "
196 pages. Illustrated with 8 pages of black & white photographs and maps.
ISBN: 0 297 78042 5
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Hunter Davies A WALK ALONG THE TRACKS First Edition