Media & Interviews
The Observer – interview with Joanna Moorhead
The Tablet – interview with Peter Stanford
Things Unseen podcast – interview with Mark Dowd
The Spectator podcast - interview with Damian Thompson
The Church Times podcast - interview with Ed Thornton
BBC One Sunday Morning Live – interview with Raphael Rowe
Guy has also been interviewed about The Crossway on numerous radio stations, including BBC Radio 2, Radio 4, Radio Scotland, the World Service, and Radio Europe.
Reviews
'Having finished this account of a 5,500km pilgrimage, on foot, from Canterbury to Jerusalem, I felt dazed [...] at the strangeness and brilliance of this extraordinary travelogue.' Rebecca Armstrong, The i newspaper
'Golden prose illuminates this moving account of a pilgrimage taken for the good of the author's mental health [...] a luminous and occasionally numinous account.'
Peter Stanford, The Observer
'A first-rate writer, and a tough-minded one [...] he writes with a sort of rapturous exactitude about the peoples, climates, and landscapes he meets.'
Boyd Tonkin, theartsdesk.com
'Stagg is a fine topographical writer [...] The journey as a redemptive recovery is a well-worn trope, but there is no glib ending here. I really enjoyed this book.'
Sara Wheeler, The Spectator
'Guy Stagg's poignant and poetic book [...] contains some captivating imagery [...] By the end of his journey he appears to have found a personal measure of salvation.'
Christine Toomey, The TLS
'Guy Stagg follows in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Laurie Lee [...] a beguiling portrait of one young man's search into the hidden corners of Europe.'
Christopher Hart, The Sunday Times
'There have been some excellent footslog memoirs in recent years [...] but none describing as marathon a trek as Stagg’s.'
Blake Morrison, The Guardian
'Stagg poignantly recounts not just his own journey as a spiritually charged Paddy Leigh Fermor, but that of the saints, soldiers and pilgrims who trod the path centuries before him.' New Statesman
'The Crossway is three journeys in one: outer, inner and historical. A blistering and beautiful debut.' The Daily Telegraph
'It is epic, but always feels intimate [...] He keeps going, plodding, wading, watching, recording, looking for redemption and hope. He finds both along the way, and loses them, and finds them again.' Lilian Pizzichini, The Literary Review
'The author combines an eye for the landscape and architecture of the towns and villages he passes through with an ear for history and the conversation of the people he encounters [...] a formidable achievement.' John Ure, Country Life
'The Crossway is so rich that it's best read a few pages at a time, the pace of reading approximating the pace of the journey. Its insights, when they come, are road-tested, weather-proofed; they have the broken-in feel of real religious wisdom.'
Paul Elie, Commonweal
'The Crossway is a chronicle of fleeting encounters, but Stagg makes each of these meetings memorable [...] Such attentiveness is a rare gift.'
John Pridmore, The Church Times
'Stagg's walk, and the book that has resulted from it, is a brave, even bravura, performance.' Francis Phillips, The Catholic Herald
'The Crossway is a deeply moving and beautifully written account of a remarkable journey.' The New European
'Such pitch-perfect prose that he has already attracted comparisons with Patrick Leigh Fermor's celebrated accounts of his youthful travels.' The Tablet
'A marvellous piece of travel writing as well as a document of an inner journey ... this beautifully written book ends on an ambivalent note which feels feels entirely honest and fitting.' The Herald
'The remarkable, almost haphazard, journey of Guy Stagg's walk from Canterbury to Jerusalem is a painfully honest read.' Ricky Ross, The Big Issue
'One of the most compelling travel books I've read in a long time, as well as a thought-provoking meditation on what it means to have faith in our turbulent contemporary world.' Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller