A Signal Failure

One November morning, Tom Jeffreys set off from Euston Station with a walking stick and an overloaded rucksack. His aim was to walk the 119 miles from London to Birmingham along the proposed route of HS2. Needless to say, he failed. In part, this is the story of the author's shortcomings - his inability to understand the city he lives in and to forge a meaningful relationship with his home-county hometown. It is also a critique of humanity's most urgent failures: of capitalism, community, the city and the suburbs and our age-old failure to find our place in the world.