About Britain

A Journey of 70 Years and 1,345 Miles

Preview

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.

Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.

Access exclusive sales and deals.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

About Britain

By: Tim Cole

Narrated by: Matt Addis

Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

No valid payment method on file.

Add payment method

Switch payment method

We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method

Switch payment method

Pay using card ending in

Switch payment method

By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Cancel

About this listen

Bloomsbury presents About Britain by Tim Cole, read by Matt Addis.

A captivating glimpse of Britain then and now, seen from behind the steering wheel.

In 1951, the Festival of Britain commissioned a series of short guides they dubbed ‘handbooks for the explorer’. Their aim was to encourage readers to venture out beyond the capital and on to ‘the roads and the by-roads’ to see Britain as a ‘living country’.

Yet these thirteen guides did more than celebrate the rural splendour of this ‘island nation’: they also made much of Britain’s industrial power and mid-century ambition – her thirst for new technologies, pride in manufacturing and passion for exciting new ways to travel by road, air and sea.

Armed with these About Britain guides, historian Tim Cole takes to the roads to find out what has changed and what has remained the same over the 70 years since they were first published. From Oban to Torquay, Caernarvon to Cambridge, he explores the visible changes to our landscape, and the more subtle social and cultural shifts that lie beneath.

In a starkly different era where travel has been transformed by the pandemic and many are journeying closer to home, About Britain is a warm and timely meditation on our changing relationship with the landscape, industry and transport. As he looks out on vineyards and apple orchards, power stations and slate mines, vast greenhouses and fulfilment centres for online goods, Cole provides an enchanting look at twentieth and early twenty-first century Britain.©2021 Tim Cole (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Europe

Great Britain

Western Europe

England