Maybe the main mystery is why the A30 was chosen to get the 2-digit number in 1922 and to become the trunk road in 1936. What, therefore, rather disappointed me was the lack of emotion and human feeling in his account of its geography and history. This look at the historical sites along the A303, a road stretching from the south-east to the south-west of Britain, connecting right through to Exeter in Devon, had fascinating potential: ancient and modern sites compete for attention on both sides of the road, that befit close attention.

For those who will never drive the A303, it explains beautifully how our road system came to be the way that it is. Hearst UK is the trading name of the National Magazine Company Ltd, 30 Panton Street, Leicester Square, London, SW1Y 4AJ.Traveling down the road in an ancient Mini Traveller car from the Sixties, he came across as someone prone to mugging in front of the camera for no apparent reason: what mattered was not so much the sites, but his reaction to them. All the stories are threaded together by the A303 and they're beguiling, but I'd have liked more of the present-day people, like Annie and her famous tea bar.

Tom Fort’s latest book begins with the premise that holidays, while supposedly among our most cherished memories, are often eclipsed by the journeys involved in getting to our destinations, in Fort’s experience this being westwards down the A303. As for the east-to-west bias of the book, Fort deals with this very wittily early on, and anyone who can spend a page speculating on whether Mrs de Winter "and her creepy husband" took the A303 or the A30 to get to his Cornish home in Rebecca without making us raise our hands in exasperation is going to get my vote. trouble with this approcah is it overloads the M5 between 25 and 29 and also once you are on the M5 at Taunton there is not much point in cutting back across to Ilminster, you might as well stay on the M5 to the M4 to get to London. This hasn't always been on friendly terms - for example, when it's jammed and no alternative routes can be found - but for the most part, we've found it to be a pleasant and (relatively) interesting highway. And when he had got tired of that he chatted to Oliver who collects and eats badgers from the Ilminster bypass.Presenter Tom Fort travels the road in a clapped out Morris Minor and in essence bores the viewer to death.