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Writer Malachy Tallack has set out from Shetland on a journey around the sixtieth parallel. Today, he reaches Alaska, America's self-proclaimed 'Last Frontier'.

Marking a borderland between 'near' and 'far north', the sixtieth parallel wraps itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway; it crosses the tip of Greenland and of South Central Alaska; it cuts the great spaces of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through Shetland, at the very top of the British Isles.

Tallack travelled to some of the places that share this latitude, beginning in Shetland, where he has spent most of his life. Focusing on the landscapes and natural environments of the parallel, and the way that people have interacted with those landscapes, Tallack explores themes of wildness and community, of isolation and engagement, of exile and memory.

Reader: Sandy Grierson
Writer: Malachy Tallack
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron

First broadcast on ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 4 in July 2015.