Random Home presents the audiobook release from the Stopping Places, written and read by Damian Le Bas.

*BBC Radio 4 Publication of the Week*

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

Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history. His great-grandmother would tell him stories of her childhood in the ancient Romani language; the places her family ended and proved helpful, the ways they lived, the superstitions about The Preventing Areas: A Trip Through Gypsy Britain and lores of their people. But his own experience of lifestyle on the road was limited by Ford Transit journeys from Western world Sussex to Hampshire to sell flowers.

Inside a bid to raised understand his Gypsy heritage, the annals from 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 winter season frosts and summer months dawns, from horse fairs to Gypsy churches, neon-lit lay-bys to fern-covered banks, Damian lives on the highway, somewhere between the romanticised Gypsies of older, and their much-maligned descendants of today.

Within this powerful and soulful debut, Damian le Bas brings the places, characters and stories of his to bold and vigorous life.