The Bridge Between Worlds by Gavin Francis review - 'an irresistibly engaging read'

Covering vast amounts of physical and metaphorical ground, Gavin Francis’s ambitious new travelogue shows there’s a lot more to bridges than you might think, writes Roger Cox

It used to be said that a good actor could read out the contents of a phone book (remember those?) and still hold their audience's attention. Well, perhaps a similar thing is true of good writers, in the sense that they are able to take apparently ho-hum subject matter and turn it into something unexpectedly fascinating.

Before reading this book by Gavin Francis, I had no interest whatsoever in bridges. This wasn't because I lacked memorable bridge-related experiences – I'd once had a spectacular journey across San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as a passenger in an open-top sports car, allowing me to gaze straight up at is iconic red towers framed by a cloudless blue sky, and I'd also enjoyed paddling a kayak under the Roman-built Pont du Gard near Nimes – an awe-inspiring bridge if ever there was one.

In both cases, though, the physical fact of the bridges themselves was enough for me. "Golden Gate? Beautiful! Now, let's explore Marin County. Pont du Gard? Incredible! Clever Romans! Now, what's around this next bend in the river?"

Gavin Francis PIC: Thomas SG Farnetti

It wouldn't be fair to say that I've never given bridges a second thought – I've barely even given them a first one. For Francis, though, who grew up in Fife, within sight of the mighty Forth bridges, they are a source of deep-felt wonderment and also jumping-off points for all kinds of intriguing philosophical expeditions. Where you or I might simply see bridges as a means of getting from A to B, he sees them as structures with the power to link communities or divide them; as conduits which have enabled empires to grow, industries to thrive, ideas to be exchanged; both as links to the past, and also as invitations to consider what kind of future we want to make for ourselves.

A book about bridges written by a professional bridge expert would almost certainly put me to sleep; Francis, however, is bristling with all the enthusiasm of the amateur, and that makes The Bridge Between Worlds an irresistibly engaging read, even when he's talking about relatively technical matters such as the process of creating bridge foundations by sinking hollow "caissons" into a riverbed and then filling them with concrete.

Since his first book in 2010, True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, Francis's output has been divided fairly evenly between travelogue (True North, Empire Antarctica in 2012 and Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession in 2020) and books about medicine (he works as a GP in Edinburgh, and drew on his medical background for 2015's Adventures in Human Being, 2018's Shapeshifters: A Journey Through the Changing Human Body and 2021's Intensive Care: A GP, a Community & COVID-19).

The Bridge Between Worlds, then, sits squarely in the travelogue half of his oeuvre. True, the bridges provide the focus for each chapter – indeed, each chapter begins with the name or names of the bridges under discussion, their span, their method of construction and the date of their completion – but as the book goes on, it becomes apparent that he is (even) more interested in the cultural and historical significance of these wonderfully varied structures than the feats of engineering that made them possible.

So, for example, two bridges across the River Tweed, the Union Chain Bridge and the Royal Border Bridge, provide the spark for a meditation on nationality and borders; the Brooklyn Bridge, meanwhile, prompts musings on some of the great American writers who worked in its shadow.

Many of the bridges Francis visits – notably the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina, famously destroyed in 1993 and subsequently rebuilt – have histories rooted in conflict and power-struggles. Towards the end of the book, however, a Scandinavian road-trip Francis takes with his son brings things to a more positive conclusion. "The bridges of Scandinavia," he writes, "demonstrate what can happen when nations cooperate for mutual benefit and exchange."

The Bridge Between Worlds: A Brief History of Connection, by Gavin Francis, Canongate, £20. Gavin Francis is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 16 and 17 August