Welcome to Literary Frictional NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host, Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. Hi, Carrie.

Did you have a long journey here today? I had quite a long journey. Yeah. here as always with my co-host, Octavia Bright. Hi, Octavia. Hi, Carrie.

Did you have a long journey here today?

I had quite a long journey. Yeah, me too.

We've come from Oxford and Margate to record the show in London.

We have.

We pilgrimage.

Yeah.

And that is very convenient because the theme of our show today is on the road. No, we're not spending

an hour talking about Jack Kerouac. Thank God. Instead, we'll be swiftly dumping Jack out the car

window and talking about all the other wonderful books that have taken us on the road and usually

on a journey of discovery too. Girl. Our guest today is Damien LaBah, who fascinating book The Stopping Places, is a journey through Gypsy Britain, in which he visits the places scattered through Britain where his family and ancestors in the traveler community have made their temporary homes. Octavia, do you want to tell our listeners a little more about Damien? With great pleasure, babe. That wasn't scripted at all, by the way. Not at all scripted. No, no, no, no, totally off the cuff. Adlib. Damien LeBow was born in 1985 into a traditional gypsy family. He was awarded scholarships to study at Christ Hospital and the University of Oxford. Between 2011 and 2015, he was the editor of Travelers Times, Britain's only national

magazine for Gypsies and Travelers. He lives and works mostly in Kent and Sussex, and the

stopping places is his first book. And it is very, very good. Yes, I agree. We're really excited

to have them on the show today. And before we get started with that, we do have a couple of

announcements,

don't we? We do. The first is to say that we're absolutely delighted to have been nominated for Best Culture Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, which is really, really exciting.

Off the back of that, slightly mawkish request also, which is making me quite embarrassed,

but you guys can also vote for us

as listeners choice and we would be really grateful if you if you did oh god I feel like I'm asking

you all to have a date with me it's on the British Podcast Awards website please vote for us

thank you we love you the second is that we're also really excited because our next show is going to be a recording of a live event at the derby book festival with the excellent writer john mcgregor who is an author most recently of the acclaimed novel reservoir 13 so if you fancy coming to see us in the flesh we'd really love to see you there if you're based in

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