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A guide to the best shows at the Festival by The Scotsman’s top team of reviewers

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Corbyn or Tim Farron, but Batley and Spen MP Tracy Brabin, elected to her seat following the murder of Jo Cox, came to the rescue and, only a few days into the job, acted as his guide.

Jarrow Road to the Deep South could well be the perfect vehicle for Maconie’s talents as a writer and communicat­or and his interests in British social and political history and pop culture which have been percolatin­g since long before his first big break, writing for music weekly NME at a time when the music press could still be considered cultural gatekeeper­s. “Kids don’t need opinion formers anymore,” he says, “you just pick what songs you like.”

Maconie may no longer be naming music scenes but, earlier this year, he added a new accolade to his CV when he became the latest president of the Ramblers, in recognitio­n of his love of walking and advocacy of the right to roam.

“I’m keen to change the perception of rambling as a nice middle class person in a Barbour jacket by a dry stone wall,” he says. “No one likes John Craven in a padded gilet more than me but I want to make the point that the outdoors is not just about agricultur­e.

“The Ramblers Society is rooted in industrial working class communitie­s in the north of England and grew out of the 1932 Kinder Trespass where a bunch of young communists from Manchester and Derbyshire trespassed on private land in the Peak District and got sent to jail.

“I’m not advocating people being aggressive or violent but there’s lots of myths about Britain, that we’re a peaceful little country, eager to please.

“But from Boudicca to the Norman conquest to the Border Reivers to the English Civil War, we’ve always been quite a bolshy, argumentat­ive nation with a long history of cutting the heads off kings and rioting.

“The idea that Britain’s natural state is calm and well-ordered is wrong. We’re not the Swiss, we’re a feisty nation and the Jarrow march is part of that tradition.”

0 Critic Mark Fisher gave Foreign Radical five stars Summerhall JJJJJ

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