Stuart Maconie is a writer, broadcaster and journalist familiar to millions from his work in print, on radio and on TV. His previous bestsellers have included Cider with Roadies, Pies and Prejudice and Adventures on the High Teas, and he currently hosts the afternoon show on BBC 6music with Mark Radcliffe as well as weekly show The Freak Zone. Based in the cities of Birmingham and Manchester, he can also often be spotted on top of a mountain in the Lake District with a Thermos flask and individual pork pie.

Stuart Maconie

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Everyone talks about 'Middle England'. Sometimes they mean something bad, like a lynch mob of Daily Mail readers, and sometimes they mean something good, like a pint of ale in a sleepy Cotswold village in summer twilight. But just where and what is Middle England? Stuart Maconie didn't know either, so he packed his Thermos and sandwiches and set off to find out... 
 
Is Middle England about tradition and decency or closed minds and bigotry? Is it maypoles and evensong, or flooded market towns and binge drinkers in the park? And is Slough really as bad as Ricky Gervais and John Betjeman make out? From Shakespeare to JK Rowling, Vaughan Williams to Craig David, William Morris to B&amp;Q, Stuart Maconie leads the expedition, with plenty of stop-offs for tea and scones, to discover the truth.

Adventures on the High Teas

In Search of Middle England

Ian McMillan

All 36 episodes of the maverick literary quiz 
 
Poet Ian McMillan is our host in this gleeful game of literary tomfoolery, outrageous parody and biting wit. Joining him for some lighthearted competitive wordplay are a quartet of writers and comedians, all ready and eager to run riot through the halls of great literature. 
 
Their bookish challenges include 'New Beginnings and Endings', which sees them topping and tailing well-known literary works to produce some very tall tales, 'Sound Effects', where they have to guess a book title from a mélange of sounds, and 'Conversation Consequences', where they imagine some unlikely meetings between fictional characters. Mrs Malaprop shares a Jacuzzi with Eliza Doolittle, Inspector Clouseau takes Blanche Dubois to a dance and The Dong with the luminous nose honks hooters with Cyrano de Bergerac... 
 
In addition, the panellists seize the chance to liberate famous authors from their individual genres and turn them loose on something different. Among their freewheeling stylings are Hunter S Thompson writing a public school prospectus, John Betjeman creating the copy for a Ford Probe brochure and Franz Kafka dispensing self-help advice in his Little Book of Calm. 
 
Wreaking havoc with the literary canon are Roger McGough, Miles Kington, Mark Thomas, Dillie Keane, John Hegley, Rory Motion, Mark Radcliffe, Arthur Smith, David Stafford, Helen Lederer, Sophie Hannah, Simon Armitage, Stuart Maconie, Linda Smith and Mark Steel. 
 
Presented by Ian McMillan 
Devised by Marc Jobst 
Produced by Marc Jobst and Viv Beeby 
 
NB: contains some dated attitudes and language 
 
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 31 October-5 December 1995 (Series 1), 18 February-25 March 1997 (Series 2), 14 October-18 November 1997 (Series 3), 2 July-6 August 1998 (Series 4), 25 November-30 December 1998 (Series 5), 22 June-27 July 1999 (Series 6) 
 
 
(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd 
© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

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