Highways of Britain

Explore the evolution of Britain's roads, from ancient trackways to modern highways like the M1 and M25.
Highways of Britain. The M1, the M6 and M25. How did we end up in this position? Chris Cooper takes us through the evolution of our road system starting with iron age track ways and moving on via Roman roads, medieval roads, turnpikes and the coaching era to something we might recognise today. We go from trying to plot a trackway from one hill fort to another, to following the entire course of a Roman road. We use a coaching era timetable to get from London to rural North Yorkshire and we follow the course of a 17th century strip map. Turnpike toll booths, stagecoaches and coaching inns all feature. Up to more modern times, what to look for to tell if your road was once different. This book also gives detailed explanations of many of the things we see on many of today's roads.

Chris was born in 1964 and is still alive (2024). He became a lorry driver through a set of random and unconnected circumstances in 1986 at the tender age of 22. Originally meant to be temporary, he is still doing it after nearly 40 years. In the early days he spent a lot of time kicking around Europe generally enjoying himself and getting paid to do so.
Returning to UK work in 2001 he has worked for a potato merchant and a carrier of Portakabins as well as in both general and bulk haulage. He has also done a stint in a transport office and is currently delivering new cars for Volvo north east.
He got into authorship by accident having been heard to say 'I could do better than that!' while being not too impressed with a book on the A1 that had recently been published. Someone else said 'go on then' and thus the Great North Road book was born. Being interested in both history and photography he found he enjoyed the task and so decided to continue and write more.
His interests are reading history, landscape photography, model making and model engineering and motorbikes.
Chris lives in rural North Yorkshire on the edge of the North York Moors with partner Liz and dogs Benji and Elton.