Hope and Glory - Stuart Maconie

Got a few of Maconie's books gathering dust in the store room and as November is a quiet trading month, I gave this one a go. He visits places in England that were behind major events in history and weaves tales of the working people who took part in them, the Battle of Orgreave, Suffragettes and Accrington Stanley teens off to the slaughter in the Somme. Not an academic history tome, Maconie solicits opinions from publicans, tea shop staff and museum cleaners and it works well, he juxtaposes a current northern town with its poundshops and kebab houses to the squalor and fermenting resentment of yesteryear. The characters are diverse, Arthur Scargill and Sid Vicious make appearances and some of the facts coming out of leftfield can be astounding. There is a dry humour throughout and a thinly veiled castigation of the modern town planning and loss of historical knowledge.
Great read.