Overview

Every place has it stories. But in some places those stories get forgotten and distorted, even tarmacked and concreted over. This is nowhere more true than in Milton Keynes, where the opinions of those who have never been to the place, or who have never ventured beyond its traffic grid, are repeatedly rolled out in the media: 'it all looks the same', 'a dystopian urban sprawl', 'concrete cow culture'. Writer, walker and mythogeographer Phil Smith has walked Milton Keynes to find some of its missing stories: stories of the old, even ancient, places within the modern city; stories of the unusual geography of ritual spaces awaiting new processions and services; stories of the forest hidden within the houses. In 'The MK Myth' he has used these rarely told stories and less well-known spaces as the backdrop to an original novel that gives Milton Keynes a new myth of itself. 'The MK Myth' is a novel for our decaying, digital times that will make sense to readers anywhere. Pursuing its central character, K, a marketing executive who falls out of the comforting ambition of her everyday life, The MK Myth takes us on a precarious journey through a city in transition, encountering its extraordinary characters as they navigate a returning past and daunting future. Uniquely, readers can follow, not only from the comfort of their sofas, but also by taking the book out into the streets, alleys, paths and woods, walking or cycling the same journey as K and sharing in her uncovering of the hidden and emerging MK. Make it your (mis)guide to a remarkable and unique city. Feel the stories under, in and through your feet. Become the myth.

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9781911193494

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Dr. Phil Smith has claws in several different worlds. One, large and wide, is in performance and music theatre [he has written more than 100 plays for companies including St Petersburg State Comedy Theatre, Opera North and Perpetual Motion, and he is dramaturg with TNT (Munich)]. From site-specific performances in South Devon beach huts, lidos, tea shops and other unconventional settings, to mis-guides in National Trust properties, to counter-tours and drifts in city streets, Crab Man has long practised what he preaches in this Handbook. He is Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Performing Arts at the University of Plymouth and a visiting lecturer at the University of Exeter. He is also one of four core member of a group of artist-researchers called Wrights and Sites, who have generated a range of mis-guides, performances, possible cities and forests and other wonders and are authors of The Architect-Walker: A Mis-Guide.

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