Adventures on the High Teas

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

Observer

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.

Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrol, FHM

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.

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

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.

News of the World

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

Sam Leith, Daily Mail

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

Lonely Planet

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.

Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday