The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain Audiobook (Free)

Random House presents the audiobook release of The Stopping Locations, written and read by Damian Le Bas.

*BBC Radio 4 Publication from the Week*

‘I needed to get to the stopping places, so I required to get on the road. It was the street where I might at last discover out where I belonged.’

Damian Le Bas was raised surrounded by Gypsy history. His great-grandmother would tell him tales of her childhood in the ancient Romani vocabulary; the locations her family stopped and worked, the methods they lived, the superstitions about The Stopping Areas: A Trip Through Gypsy Britain and lores of their people. But his very own experience of lifestyle on the road was limited to Ford Transit journeys from Western Sussex to Hampshire to sell flowers.

Inside a bid to better understand his Gypsy heritage, the annals of the Britain’s Romanies and the rhythms of their life today, Damian sets out on a journey to discover the atchin tans, or halting spots – the old encampment sites known only to Travellers. Through wintertime frosts and summer dawns, from equine fairs to Gypsy churches, neon-lit lay-bys to fern-covered banks, Damian lives on the highway, somewhere within the romanticised Gypsies of older, and their much-maligned descendants of today.

In this powerful and soulful debut, Damian le Bas brings the areas, characters and tales of his to bold and vigorous life.