Sports journalist swaps transfer talk for trains in new book

A sports journalist from Stroud has swapped matches and transfer talk for trains, history and humour in a new book he has written about his native North East. The sports editor of Gloucestershire Live’s sister newspaper the Western Daily Press, has penned Metroland – The people, places and history encountered via the Tyne & Wear Metro, a travelogue based around the region’s light rail network.

Metroland author Keith Watson, 44, has used 60 stations on the system as the basis for each chapter. He mixes observations on life with recent and more traditional history, sport and humour, as well as drawing upon the personal experiences and memories created after being born in Sunderland, raised in Washington, schooled in Newcastle, and having one set of grandparents on Tyneside and the other on Wearside.

Keith who was born and raised in the North East, but has spent his entire 21-year journalism career working in Gloucestershire, Bristol and just across the Severn in Newport. He said: “First and foremost, the book is framed around the Metro stations, but it is also about the people, places and history of the area.”

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“I’m not a historian or a sociologist, a political aficionado or an architectural expert, I’m a newspaper sports sub-editor by trade, so this book is not intended to be an in-depth dive into particular topics, and is simply a snapshot in time, not an exhaustive study. I’d like to think I’m reasonably well-placed to write about the whole region as I’m from Sunderland, but I know Newcastle very well too.

“The Newcastle-Sunderland rivalry, a lot of people see it as a massive divide, but I know from personal experience that Geordies and Mackems mix a lot more than some people would have you believe, and even the most diehard football fan of one persuasion or the other is probably glad deep down that the other side is there just so they can dislike them.”

In terms of how the book came together, Keith, who lives near Stroud with his wife of 14 years Michelle and their children Poppy and Isaac, adds: “I visited each Metro station and walked around the surrounding areas. In addition to what I saw, I also researched the history of each area, mediaeval and more modern.

“Some chapters have more obvious points of discussion, such as the city centre stations of Newcastle and Sunderland or the other large built-up areas, but even the quieter stations have some interesting social history to uncover, and because I am writing about the area I grew up in, there are also plenty of personal memories to embellish the narrative.”

During his trip around the Metro network, which as well as the two rival cities takes in Byker, Gateshead, Jarrow, North and South Shields, Tynemouth, Wallsend and Whitley Bay, Keith delves into the past with the Venerable Bede and William the Conqueror, discovers ‘fart lamps’, and remembers when regional TV presenter Dawn Thewlis threw a bucket of cold water over him.

And with sport a big passion for Keith and the North East in general, he also recalls when he hit his brother in the head with a well-struck pitch and putt shot, visits the field where Alan Shearer learned to kick a football, and looks back at the careers of world class athletes Brendan Foster and Steve Cram.

Metroland – The people, places and history encountered via the Tyne & Wear Metro is available to pre-order here.