Adventures on the High Teas is magnificent: sprawling in its research, illuminating, quirky, saddening, fun, often angry and always intensely readable.

Stuart Maconie discovers whether Middle England is a place or a feeling... all described with his usual charm and wit.

Maconie's gift is finding beauty in the most unexpected places and after reading this you'll want to call up Google maps and plan your own journey. It's a wonderfully enriching read.

Taken as a whole, the book amounts to a time capsule of England as it is now; it is, in its quirky offbeat way, a celebration of this country's extra-ordinary capacity to accomodate change while remaining essentially the same.

It is these juxtapositions of the high and the low, the hip and the furiously unfashionable, or, if you like, the sublime and the ridiculous, that make Maconie such an entertaining tour guide.

I love Stuart Maconie - he's one of Briatin's truest and most comforting voices. In High Teas... he explodes the myths and stereotypes of Middle England. My own preconcived notions were banished with this delightful, warm postcard from some of England's most eccentric places.

Puffed up and preposterous, but Piers is the Pepys of the celebrity age.

He is an engaging witness to the events that brought peace to the benighted north - largely because he wants no future role in politics and can afford to be outspoken

All parties should consult Powell’s meticulous account of negotiations that underpinned the peace process