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Before New York Times bestselling author Bill Bryson wrote The Road to Little Dribbling, he took this delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation of Great Britain, which has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey.
Born in Iowa, Bill Bryson has spent most of his life in Great Britain. He met and married an English woman on a visit and stayed. In the early 1990s, he and his wife decided to move to the United States for a time to give their children a chance to experience life in another country. Before he went, however, Bryson took a goodbye tour of Great Britain, and the result was “Notes from a Small Island” (1992).
Readers of Bryson's other travel books will know what to expect: rapture and ridicule, delight and disgust, the good and the bad alternating each step along the way. Everything is described in hilarious detail, but the bad is always much funnier than the good.
He writes a lot about architecture. Bradford's role in life, he says, is "to make every place else in the world look better in comparison." Two new buildings in Inverness he calls "two piles of heartbreak." He has nothing good to say about the British habit of tearing down beautiful old buildings to construct modern monstrosities.
He describes a certain castle as "everyone's favorite ruin after Princess Margaret." He calls Liverpool "a festival of litter." He hates the metal chairs now found in so many beautiful English cathedrals.
He often pans the places where he stays and the restaurants where he eats. He discusses hotel dining rooms where you get "three courses of pompous description and overcooked disappointment."
One of the highlights of his tour, and there are many more than I am suggesting here, is the chance to see “This Is Cinerama” once again. This movie extravangza, which introduced the short-lived Cinerama films, delighted him when he was a boy back in the 1950s, and is shown, or at least was shown at this time, on a regular basis in an otherwise unimpressive British town. Bryson visited just to see the movie again and was not disappointed.
His book, though now decades old, does not disappoint either. ( )
Very few books make me laugh out loud, and this one did a few times. But despite the laughs and sharing Bryson's aesthetic taste in towns, I was relieved to finish this. It's just little too mean and a little too whiny in ways that didn't contribute much. Still worth a read, but maybe not if you're already feeling down on society. ( )
I enjoyed the travelogue and the time period. I don't know, parts were charming and funny but I just don't think Bryson & I have enough overlap in what we find amusing. 4 or 5 books in, I'm calling it.
Also, I can't say this enough, men please stop turning your domestic squabbles into observations about all women. I'm sorry your wife doesn't have her change ready at the register. I promise you, it's not a genetic trait applicable to 3 billion people. ( )
My first sight of England was on a foggy March night in 1973 when I arrived on the midnight ferry from Calais.
Quotations
My AA Book of British Towns included lavish and kindly descriptions of every obscure community you could think to name ... but of Retford it maintained a stern and mysterious silence.
I found in My AA Book of British Towns an artist's illustration of central Edinburgh as it might be seen from the air. It showed Princes Street lined from end to end with nothing but fine old buildings. The same was true of all the other artists' impressions of British cities ... You can't do that, you know. You can't tear down fine old structures and pretend they are still there.
[At Blenheim] I took the opportunity to study the miniature steam train. It ran over a decidedly modest length of track across one corner of the rounds. The sight of fifty English people crouched on a little train in a cold drizzle waiting to be taken 200 yards and thinking they were having fun is one that I shall not forget in a hurry.
Last words
And then I turned from the gate and got in the car and knew without doubt that I would be back.
Before New York Times bestselling author Bill Bryson wrote The Road to Little Dribbling, he took this delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation of Great Britain, which has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey.
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Book description
Bill Bryson, although living in Yorkshire, England, was born in America, and after deliberation with his wife, decided to move back there. Before departing, however, Bryson travelled one last time around England, from Dover to Liverpool to John O’Groats, keeping a record of his experiences. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a book filled with trains, tea-rooms, and (mostly) polite, amiable people.
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Readers of Bryson's other travel books will know what to expect: rapture and ridicule, delight and disgust, the good and the bad alternating each step along the way. Everything is described in hilarious detail, but the bad is always much funnier than the good.
He writes a lot about architecture. Bradford's role in life, he says, is "to make every place else in the world look better in comparison." Two new buildings in Inverness he calls "two piles of heartbreak." He has nothing good to say about the British habit of tearing down beautiful old buildings to construct modern monstrosities.
He describes a certain castle as "everyone's favorite ruin after Princess Margaret." He calls Liverpool "a festival of litter." He hates the metal chairs now found in so many beautiful English cathedrals.
He often pans the places where he stays and the restaurants where he eats. He discusses hotel dining rooms where you get "three courses of pompous description and overcooked disappointment."
One of the highlights of his tour, and there are many more than I am suggesting here, is the chance to see “This Is Cinerama” once again. This movie extravangza, which introduced the short-lived Cinerama films, delighted him when he was a boy back in the 1950s, and is shown, or at least was shown at this time, on a regular basis in an otherwise unimpressive British town. Bryson visited just to see the movie again and was not disappointed.
His book, though now decades old, does not disappoint either. (