Mike Parker

The Politics of Coal's Decline (1994) examines the decline of the European coal industry and assesses its future prospects. It shows how the manner and rate of this decline is determined as much by political as by economic factors, including the politics of environmental controls and market liberalisation.

A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023 A funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England–Wales border: Britain’s deepest faultline. There is a line on the map: to one side Wales, small, rugged and stubborn; on the other England, crucible of the most expansionist culture the world has ever seen. It is a line that has been dug, debated, defined and defended for twenty centuries. All the Wide Border is a personal journey through the places, amongst the people, and across the divides of the border between England and Wales. Taking in some of our loveliest landscapes, and our darkest secrets, this is a region of immeasurable wonder and interest. It is here that the deepest roots and thorniest paradoxes of Britishness lie. The border between the countries, even as a concept, is ragged, jagged and many-layered. Garlanded author Mike Parker has adored and explored these places his entire life. Born in England but settled in Wales, he finds himself typical of many in being pulled in both directions. His journey is divided into three legs, corresponding with the watersheds of the three great border rivers: the Dee in the north, the Severn in the centre, the Wye in the south. Neither quite England nor Wales, the furzy borderland he uncovers — the March — is another country. Picking apart the many notions and clichés of Englishness, Welshness and indeed Britishness, Mike Parker plays with the very idea of borders: our fascination with them, our need for them, and our response to their power. In his hands, the England–Wales frontier is revealed to be a border within us all, and it is fraying, fast.

A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023 A funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England–Wales border: Britain’s deepest faultline. There is a line on the map: to one side Wales, small, rugged and stubborn; on the other England, crucible of the most expansionist culture the world has ever seen. It is a line that has been dug, debated, defined and defended for twenty centuries. All the Wide Border is a personal journey through the places, amongst the people, and across the divides of the border between England and Wales. Taking in some of our loveliest landscapes, and our darkest secrets, this is a region of immeasurable wonder and interest. It is here that the deepest roots and thorniest paradoxes of Britishness lie. The border between the countries, even as a concept, is ragged, jagged and many-layered. Garlanded author Mike Parker has adored and explored these places his entire life. Born in England but settled in Wales, he finds himself typical of many in being pulled in both directions. His journey is divided into three legs, corresponding with the watersheds of the three great border rivers: the Dee in the north, the Severn in the centre, the Wye in the south. Neither quite England nor Wales, the furzy borderland he uncovers — the March — is another country. Picking apart the many notions and clichés of Englishness, Welshness and indeed Britishness, Mike Parker plays with the very idea of borders: our fascination with them, our need for them, and our response to their power. In his hands, the England–Wales frontier is revealed to be a border within us all, and it is fraying, fast.

Join author, speaker, and coach Mike Parker in an inspiring journey of self-discovery as he reveals the keys to finding, keeping, and savoring your most gratifying, heartwarming, and rewarding memories. It all starts with his delightfully unique and uplifting questions for you to Ask Yourself in a guided journal format. These questions are specifically designed to help you focus on the best times and people from your past, present, and even future. Ask Yourself is your guide to a happier, healthier life, full of inspiring self-discovery. With the turn of each page, you will rediscover the memories and people you never want to forget. This thoughtfully crafted guided journal will bring all of those memories to the forefront of your mind and help you store them in the perfect place to keep forever.

A personal journey through recovering from brain trauma, and relearning music. Although based on personal experience, this book examines learning styles, and the issues of relearning, and will, hopefully, be useful to those who are making the same journey, or helping others who find themselves making an unexpected da Capo

The Celtic harp is a familiar part of the modern harp world. It is a common starting point for many players, and a major voice in modern Celtic traditional music. It carries with it cultural and political echoes, and a mythology linking it back to ancient players and music. The Egan Portable Irish harp, the first of the neo-celtic harps was introduced c. 1816, and celebrates the bicentenary of receiving the Royal Warrant in 2021, but much has happened on the journey to the modern instrument, with many changes, and people involved. This essay attempts to put some of the stories in order, and plot a logical path through the development of the neo-celtic harp, from its origins in the drawing rooms of the 19th C through to the creation of the modern lever harp.

WINNER OF THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2020SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2020__________________________'A moving story of love, tradition and landscape.' Evening Standard, 'Books of the Year''A moving, multilayered memoir... extraordinary, ambitious... its scope is immense. A book that is deep in riches.' Simon Callow, Guardian'A marvellous book... an uplifting tale of tranquillity sought and found in the nearest Britain gets to paradise.' Simon Jenkins'There are worlds on worlds within this lyrical and profoundly cultured book. In an age of toxic artifice, this is the most necessary medicine: the tenderness of reality and the living, elemental, world.' Jay Griffiths __________________________A multi-layered memoir of love, acceptance, finding home and the redemptive power of nature. In 2006, Mike Parker and his partner Peredur were witnesses at the civil partnership of their friends Reg and George, the first in the small Welsh town of Machynlleth. Years later, when Reg and George died within a few weeks of each other, Mike and Peredur discovered that they had been left their home: a whitewashed 'house from the children's stories', buried deep within the hills. On the Red Hill is the story of Rhiw Goch, 'the Red Hill', and its inhabitants, but also the story of a remarkable rural community and a legacy that extends far beyond bricks and mortar. It is a story that celebrates the turn of the year's wheel, of ever-changing landscapes, and of the family found in the unlikeliest of places. Highly commended by the judging panel for the 2020 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing__________________________'A delightful book about beauty, joy, love and home... to be celebrated and read.' Sara Maitland'A great queer rural triumph of a book - wonderfully passionate, funny and insightful. It overflows with love.' Tom Bullough

Overnight Sam's world has been turned upside down. The realization that every time he falls asleep he wakes up somewhere else has the young lawyer questioning everything, including his own sanity. His desperate search for answers will pull him into an adventure that is beyond his wildest dreams.

In his fourth collection of poetry, Parker is a disc jockey spinning fossil records in defense of conscious science and common sense. His no-nonsense attitude gets to the gravel and grit of political and environmental issues, and at the same time glides in the tenderness of love for the children of his mountain community and the awe and reverence he feels towards things imbued with natural power and beauty, whether it be a woman or a mountain or losing a lifelong friend to cancer. In several activist poems Parker puts the fist back in pacifist, becoming a ballsy bubble-hashed buddhistic bean-spiller to the shameless sprawl of the military industrial complex, from the creeping resurgence of fascist corporate oligarchy and the quietly quarantined contaminants at the Rocky Flats nuclear superfund site to outcroppings of viruses such as Ebola, Zika, xenophobia and bigotry. Tackling contemporary issues such as war refugees, immigration, climate change, Parker unleashes a barrage of rhythmic rants in a punk poetic whack-a-mole response to the conflagration of hate wherever it pops up with the sheer fire, flare and brevity of an iron-nickel meteor shower. With sitting meditation and frequent mountaineering as his personal path of heart & hailstones, he continues to be a mentor to working poets and a voice for the working poor. "Michael Parker's Kimono Mountain transports the reader to remote Colorado mountains and introduces a sexy spring rhubarb, a stalker cougar, and the well-worn snowshoes of life. He harkens back to NYC days in a tragic story about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and a chance encounter with fellow conscientious objector Muhammad Ali. Parker's epic love poem for his wife and daughter, How to Make Your Own Kimono, is heart warmer. But Mike always returns to his roots, his core, reminding us, that 'treason is in season.' Plutonium pollution hides under the spotless mountain, 'homeless hole in America's shoe' and there's an 'OxyMoron in the White House.' He never lets the peace and isolation of the mountains distract him from the struggle against economic disparity and injustice, 'rich get richer, poor almost get paid.' " Emily Armstrong "In Kimono Mountain Poems, one quickly sees Mike, the far-reaching humble poet pushing his gift into stronger and sharper cadences, beats and zen-jester-wit. The wide curragh of themes which his pen encapsulates: breath, equality, dismay, loss, friendship, grief, earth-glory, home - all reach kindredship with Mike's taut lines of verse. Like currachs tied tightly at the dock, Mike's poems are bound by his artistic sensibilities and his deeply human connection to all that is embedded in his heart. I am a better man for having read these offerings." Brian Buckley, Co-Proprietor of Innisfeee Poetry Bookstore & Caf , Boulder, CO. "Seething with life, Kimono Mountain grabs poetry by the throat and shakes words till they tumble out with lust, beauty and clear eyed honesty. Michael Parker writes about nature, politics and love with passionate simplicity and a complicated desire that you feel in your body as well as your heart." Pat Ivers

Mike Parker, bestselling author of Map Addict, is back with a very full, intelligent and witty exploration into a glorious and passionate British subject – footpaths and the history of land ownership. Mike discovers how these paths have become part of our cultural landscape and why, at the tender age of 44, he suddenly finds himself at a crossroads. Provocative, funny and personal, this book celebrates Britain’s unique and extraordinary network of footpaths. It examines their chequered and surprisingly turbulent history, from the Enclosures Acts of the eighteenth century to the 1932 Mass Trespass on Kinder Scout in Derbyshire; and from the hard-won post-war establishment of great National Trails like the Pennine Way to the dramatic latter-day battles by the likes of Nicholas van Hoogstraten and Madonna to keep ramblers off their land. The story ranges far and wide, to all corners of the country and beyond, and is filled with the many characters that Mike engages with along the way – the poets and artists, farmers and ramblers, landowners and Rights of Way officers and campaigners, historians, archivists and anyone else who crosses his path (or even tries to block it).

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'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said…' Mike Parker, presenter of Radio 4’s On the Map, celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic, critically-acclaimed read. On an average day, we will consult some form of map approximately a dozen times, often without even noticing: they are a cipher for every area of human existence. At a stroke, they convey precise information about topography, layout, history, politics and power. They are the unsung heroes of life: Map Addict sings their song. There are some fine, dry tomes out there about the history and development of cartography: this is not one of them. Mixing wry observation with hard fact and considerable research, Map Addict unearths the offbeat, the unusual and the downright pedantic in a celebration of all things maps. Combining history, travel, politics, memoir and oblique observation in a highly readable, and often very funny, style, Mike Parker confesses how his own impressive map collection was founded on a virulent teenage shoplifting habit, ponders how a good leftie can be so gung-ho about British cartographic imperialism and wages a one-man war against the moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age. This new edition of the beloved classic has been fully revised and updated, with a new chapter on digital maps: the good, the bad, the Google Street View.

My Wife Has All the Answers offers the futile but usually humorous attempts of an aging Baby Boomer to deal with the demands of daily living.