Released 17.04.25

The Conversation

In this podcast episode, Sophy speaks with writer Rob Cowen about his new book, The North Road, published by Hutchinson Heinemann. Rob describes how the road — which runs from over 400 miles from London to Edinburgh — binds layers of deep history with a jarring (and sometimes uncannily synchronised) present.

Rob explains his inspiration, how on an archaeological dig alongside the road in North Yorkshire, he finds himself standing over a Roman skeleton: “I was caught in this weird moment where I was suddenly between time, caught between past, present and future, and just painfully, awesomely aware of these intersecting streams of time.” The experience propelled him into an exploration of the road and its history, as well as his own family’s connection to the route through his great-grandfather.

Sophy and Rob’s conversation touches on the literary influences he encountered, from the poet John Clare, to Patrick Leigh Fermor and Edward Thomas. They talk about the ghostly imprint of highwaymen, soldiers and ritual celebrations along the North Road. They agree that narratives are constructed as much from myth as from reality, which is a darker, more complicated — and perhaps more interesting — territory to explore.

The ultimate quest he wants the book to address: Who are we? How did we get here? Where are we going? “To answer those questions, you have to reckon with the shallowly buried broken pieces and the bones. You have to come to your knees and work through these things to understand…how we can carry all of this forward in a constructive way…The actual fact is, when you look at time, when you look at history, there's far more that connects us as human beings than there is that separates us. And we have to reckon with the good and bad.”