The Postal Paths

'A delightful exploration of one of our most important cultural figures in the community, the postman. Postal Paths journeys around the UK, unearthing forgotten stories... You will never look at a postman in the same way again.'
-REBECCA SMITH, author of Rural: The Lives of the Working Class Countryside

Seeing the hills, the crofts, villages and ruins only tells half the story. The people who worked, walked, lived and died here are the other half.

Postal paths span the length and breadth of Britain - from the furthermost corners of the Outer Hebrides to the isolated communities clinging to the cliffs of the Rame Peninsula in south-east Cornwall. For over 200 years, postmen and women have delivered post to homes across Britain on foot, no matter how remote.

A chance remark by a farmer about a Postman's Path led Alan Cleaver on a quest to discover more about this network of lanes, short-cuts and footpaths in the British landscape. From the rolling fells of Cumbria to Kent's shingle coast, he walked in the footsteps of 20th Century posties. And what he found, through conversation and painstaking research, was not just beautiful scenery. It was an incredible, forgotten slice of social history - the tales and toil of rural postmen and women trudging down lanes, over fields, and even across rivers to make sure the post always came on time.

From women like Hannah Knowles, who began her job delivering letters in 1912 and would only miss three days through illness over the next 62 years of service, to a WW1 veteran who completed his 9-mile delivery route on one leg, Postal Paths paints a vivid picture of people who not only served communities but brought them together, one letter at a time.


'As a fan of handwritten letters, I am so pleased this book exists! With detailed research, Cleaver manages to bring to the life the lives of those who served their communities when there was no such thing as the internet... I am delighted that their stories are being told.'
-KIRAN SIDHU, journalist and author of I Can Hear the Cuckoo