I loved that Notes from a Small Island transported me from the couch to Great Britain. I hated that Bill Bryson, at his grumpy and condescending worst, was my travel companion. Ah, I need a cup of tea.

“To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.”

Bryson wanders across the UK, from Dover to John O’Groats, commenting on guesthouses, city designs and British culture, while delivering lengthy tirades along the way. Most chapters find him sheltering from downpours in pubs and cafes. Occasionally, he shares his trademark facts about a place, but his constant whining usually follows.

“Goodness me! What an outburst! Let’s lighten up and go look at some good things.”

Even Bryson finds his complaining akin to “tedious bleating” and seems astounded by his own outbursts. It’s like reading one long, endless complaint; he’s grumpier and more aggressive than usual. He’s also sexist, ridicules those with Asperger’s, partakes in body shaming, and “aches” to kick a small dog, “just to see how far it could go.”

Bryson is continually rude and condescending to wait staff and tourism workers. He’s an obnoxious tourist, that despite having lived in the UK for years, visits the likes of McDonald’s in Edinburgh, where he rudely complains some more. He ambles around by himself in the day, gets drunk by himself at night, and curses society, places he visits, and everything else in life for not meeting his unrealistic expectations.

So, what kept me going? The fact it was depicting Great Britain, a place I have connection to, a fondness for, and immense desire to see. Perhaps, because of this, I found myself jotting down place names in hopes of visiting and maybe even comparing them to how much has changed since these 90s descriptions.

Favourite chapters included Windsor, Dorset, the Cotswolds and Scotland. Bryson captured the beauty of these places well, and his enthusiasm for protecting it was admirable. At times it felt like an episode of Great British Railway Journeys. I half-expected Bill to bump into Michael Portillo at one of the many stations.

“I can remember when you couldn’t buy a British Rail sandwich without wondering if this was your last act before a long period on a life-support machine.”

Thankfully, he succeeded in making me chuckle occasionally, and sometimes his tangents landed well. I was amazed by the amount of history on display in every day Britain. I particularly enjoyed his visit to a Roman mosaic in the Cotswolds.

“I don’t know what seized me more, the thought that people in togas had once stood on this floor chatting in vernacular Latin or that it was still here, flawless and undisturbed, amid this tangle of growth.”

Such moments were fleeting, however, before he returned to rants about shopping centres, architecture and urbanisation. Repeatedly reminiscing about his journalism days was boring too - I don’t read travel books to learn about office jobs, Bill!

Aspects haven't aged well – whether it be outdated statistics, certain remarks, or a surprising reference to my city of Hobart (10,000 miles away) that no longer holds true.

While I previously enjoyed the work of Bill Bryson, I feel mixed about Notes from a Small Island. Guess I just need to hurry up and experience these places for myself! Bryson’s final words sum up the conflicting nature of the book.

“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realised what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it.”

He my be grumpy, but he is my kind of grumpy! I have loved this authors work for years and am currently listening to his books as apposed to reading a physical copy.
Update 20.12.2023 Bill's wanderings around the UK fill me full of joy and piggy snort laughs.

he really loves the word prosperous.

I first read this book back in the late 90s, 20 years ago and thoroughly enjoyed.
This is my first re-read, and it was enjoyable, as good as the first read ? Hmm, probably not (which was a little disappointing), but still fun.

I shall write more thoughts anon but shall leave you with Bill’s thought “ Hae ya nae hook ma dooky ? “

Ok, so in the last couple of days I have been thinking about why this was a tad disappointing, and I think it was because it was 20 years old, and it was really of its time. It was about Britain 20 years after he had arrived in the UK, but it was also 20 something years old, and that really showed. As someone who lived through the 90s, and even the 70s I loved the book originally and laughed my fao, at an American championing and challenging us Brits.Now though this feels a little dated, we have moved on, and some of our cities have been regenerated and some have probably degenerated as well.

I have this vague memory that he has written fairly recently a new critique of Britain and I will be interested in reading it as soon as.

All of that said, this is outrageously funny, as Bill is very perceptive about us Brits, and most of us like nothing more than people pointing out our quirks in an admiring manner. He lived here for 20 years and so was almost an honorary Brit and this comes across in the book, his love of living here, and how much he was going to miss moving back to the States.

Such a fun romp when you open a Bryson book!

This was a recounting of a trip, and not his first, to England. He'd lived there, but hadn't yet fulfilled the measure of his creation as writer of Places Distant yet, and so this was his shot at England. So funny. When you need something refreshing between Beckett and S. King, or your gardening and self-help books, this might be just the thing!

3 stars - he seemed a little cranky, the cheese was sharper in places (in a mean way).

5 Stars for Notes from a Small Island (audiobook) by Bill Bryson read by McLarty.

This book is like a trip to the UK where you get to explore all of the off the beaten path places. And you’re not in a hurry to stay on a schedule. You find a place to eat when you’re hungry and a place to sleep when you get tired. And the best part is that there’s no jet lag from being in the air for most of a day.

To start with I am a Bill Bryson fan. I laugh loudly at his humour which can be scathing. I love his travelogues. In this journey he travels through England, Wales and Scotland (but the last two probably make for only one-quarter of the book).

Even though, aside from a few days in London some years back, I have not ventured in the British Isles I thoroughly enjoyed and felt a part of this trip with Bill Bryson. It was like I was sitting or walking beside him on the trains, buses and hikes he took. But I would certainly not be the one to go to pubs. I am sure the expense would be prohibitive and I much prefer having a glass of wine or beer on my deck outside (weather dependent) or inside on the living room couch whilst reading a book and quietly listening to music.

This book does contain many British expressions (car park, crisps, chips (what we over here call French fries) and references to British personalities unknown to me.

I much enjoyed the erudite writing style and the informative presentation of his travels.

Bill Bryson is never afraid to criticize or mock anyone. He loves, praises and admires the British landscape and the country villages, but these too, do not escape his biting wit.


Page 129 (my book)

As I left the gardens and walked back towards the palace, I took the opportunity to study the miniature steam train. It ran over a decidedly modest length of track across one corner of the grounds. The sight of fifty English people crouched on a little train in a cold grey drizzle waiting to be taken 200 yards and thinking they were having fun is one that I shall not forget in a hurry.

‘Notes from a Small Island’ and ‘Neither Here nor There’ are Bill Bryson’s early travelogues concerning his journeys through Britain and other European countries respectively.

Both of these books are the strongest and the funniest of Bryson’s earliest work and undoubtedly established his reputation (at that time) as a travel writer and commentator of repute, producing engaging and very entertaining travelogues.

Now very much the Anglo-American (having lived at times in the UK and now holding dual UK/US nationality) Bryson writes here very much as ‘a young American abroad’ – with all the cultural and language based misunderstandings that predictably ensue. Whilst all this could certainly have been trite, pedestrian and clichéd as well as probably unfunny and verging on the xenophobic, what Bryson does here though is very much far from that – the joke more often than not is on him and just as importantly, the jokes are more often than not very funny.

What also comes across in addition to the humour, is the open mind and love (although admittedly occasionally hate) that Bryson has for travel and exploring other countries and cultures.

Bryson’s more recent books are now no longer limited to the ‘travel’ genre and have been of varying quality; he still however produces some great reads every now and then (most recently see: ‘One Summer: America, 1927’) – but this was where it all started.

Actual score 1.5/5 stars for the few interesting facts that came out, but otherwise, sorry, not for me this one............

Bill Bryson likes hedgerows, yelling at people, the English language, complaining, pretending to be a hiker, the fifth Duke of Portland, W.J.C. Scott-Bentinck, and himself. He tries too hard to be clever, and although you're being introduced to some interesting mental pictures ("a mid-face snack dispenser" for instance), and it's positively obvious how much he loves the English language and the art of writing, the lengths to which he goes can be tiring. The long-winded, irritating tangents he goes on add to this eye-clawing frustration. He seems to be bipolar, or maybe hypoglycemic, for his like or dislike of a certain village or city appears to be related to how much he's eaten or how much sleep he's had. (And please answer, who goes to see the best of England in the winter?) He is rude to a McDonald's cashier and the owner of a guest house, which I simply cannot tolerate. I have a soft spot for the Scots, and the way Bryson pokes fun at the gentlemen in a local pub is unfathomable. On top of everything else, there is very little mention of my home for 6 months, Norwich, and the closest he seems to get is a switch at Newmarket. Still, I didn't completely hate this book, and it had me laughing out loud at some points because he hit it dead on. Interesting about the hedgerows and the former Duke of Portland, too. Mustn't grumble, or so they say.

Britain viewed through an American's eyes.
Although both the British and American speak English, their words and cultures are hilariously different.


A quick look at the local magazines at a boarding house
I'd intended to turn in early, but on the way to my room I noticed a door marked RESIDENTS' LOUNGE and put my head in. It was a large parlour, with easy chairs and a settee, all with starched antimacassars; a bookcase with a modest selection of jigsaw puzzles and paperback books; an occasional table with some well-thumbed magazines; and a large colour television. I switched on the TV and looked through the magazines while I waited for it to warm up. They were all women's magazines, but they weren't like the magazines my mother and-sister read.

The articles in my mother's and sister's magazines were always about sex and personal gratification. They had titles like 'Eat Your Way to Multiple Orgasms', 'Office Sex - How to Get It', 'Tahiti: The Hot New Place for Sex' and 'Those Shrinking Rainforests - Are They Any Good for Sex?' The British magazines addressed more modest aspirations. They had titles like 'Knit Your Own Twinset', 'Money-Saving Button Offer', 'Make This Super Knitted Soap-Saver' and 'Summer's Here - It's Time for Mayonnaise!'



Fun at the Hazlitt hotel
Hazlitt's is a nice hotel, but the thing I like about it is that it doesn't act like a hotel. It's been there for years, and the staff are friendly - always a novelty in a big city hotel - but they do manage to give the slight impression that they haven't been doing this for very long. Tell them that you have a reservation and want to check in and they get a kind of panicked look and begin a perplexed search through drawers for registration cards and room keys. It's really quite charming. And the delightful girls who clean the rooms - which, let me say, are always spotless and exceedingly comfortable - seldom seem to have what might be called a total command of English, so that when you ask them for a bar of soap or something, you see that they are watching your mouth closely and then, pretty generally, they return after a bit with a hopeful look bearing a pot plant or a commode or something that is manifestly not soap. It's a wonderful place. I wouldn't go anywhere else.

Communism - British style
It has long seemed to me unfortunate - and I'm taking the global view here - that such an important experiment in social organization was left to the Russians when the British would have managed it so much better. All those things that are necessary to the successful implementation of a rigorous socialist system are, after all, second nature to the British. For a start, they like going without. They are great at pulling together, particularly in the face of adversity, for a perceived common good. They will queue patiently for indefinite periods and accept with rare fortitude the imposition of rationing, bland diets and sudden inconvenient shortages of staple goods, as anyone who has ever looked for bread at a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon will know. They are comfortable with faceless bureaucracies and, as Mrs Thatcher proved, tolerant of dictatorships. They will wait uncomplainingly for years for an operation or the delivery of a household appliance. They have a natural gift for making excellent jokes about authority without seriously challenging it, and they derive universal satisfaction from the sight of the rich and powerful brought low. Most of those above the age of twenty-five already dress like East Germans. The conditions, in a word, are right.
Please understand I'm not saying that Britain would have been a happier, better place under Communism, merely that the British would have done it properly. They would have taken it in their stride, with good heart, and without excessive cheating.

Appreciating life British style
I used to be puzzled by the curious British attitude to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies - 'well, it makes a change', 'mustn't grumble', 'you could do worse', 'it's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful', 'it was quite nice really' -but gradually I came round to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier.

I remember finding myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold cafe on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented with a cup of tea and a teacake and going 'Ooh, lovely!', and I knew then that the process had started. Before long I came to regard all kinds of activities - asking for more toast in a hotel, buying wool-rich socks at Marks & Spencer, getting two pairs of trousers when I only really needed one - as something daring, very nearly illicit. My life became immensely richer.

The unbelievable building of Stonehenge
I was particularly interested in the Stonehenge Gallery because I was going there on the morrow, so I read all the instructive labels attentively. I know this goes without saying, but it really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took 500 men just to pull each sarsen, plus 100 more to dash around positioning the rollers.



Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk 600 people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside, muscle it into an upright position and then saying, 'Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party'!' Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.

Bill discovers the actual floor of an ancient Roman house
I knew that I was in the villa. In one of the relict chambers, the floor had been carefully covered with plastic fertilizer bags weighted with stones at each corner. This is what I had come to see. I had been told about this by a friend but had never really believed it. For underneath those bags was a virtually complete Roman mosaic, about five feet square, exquisitely patterned and flawlessly preserved but for a tiny bit of fracturing around the edges.
I cannot tell you how odd it felt to be standing in a forgotten wood in what had once been, in an inconceivably distant past, the home of a Roman family, looking at a mosaic laid at least 1,600 years ago when this was an open sunny space, long before this ancient wood grew up around it. It is one thing to see these things in museums, quite another to come upon one on the spot where it was laid. I have no idea why it hadn't been gathered up and taken away to some place like the Corinium Museum. I presume it is a terrible oversight, but I am so grateful to have had the chance to see it. I sat for a long time on a stone, riveted with wonder and admiration. I don't know what seized me more, the thought that people in togas had once stood on this floor chatting in vernacular Latin or that it was still here, flawless and undisturbed, amid this tangle of growth.

What Rubbish
I took a train to Liverpool. They were having a featival of litter when I arrived. Citizens had taken time off from their busy activities to add crisp packets, empty cigarette boxes and carrier-bags to the otherwise bland and neglected landscape. They fluttered gaily in the bushes and brought colour and texture to pavements and gutters. And to think that elsewhere we stick these objects in rubbish bags.

Animals need more protection than children
Did you know that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was formed sixty years after the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and as an offshoot of it?
Did you know that in 1994 Britain voted for a European Union directive requiring statutory rest periods for transported animals, but against statutory rest periods for factory workers?



How's the weather?
It's a weather forecast from the 'Western Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.'
There you have in a single pithy sentence the English weather captured to perfection: dry but rainy with some warm/cool spells. The Western Daily Mail could run that forecast every day - for all I know, it may - and scarcely ever be wrong.

Art for Art's sake
in one of the salons I noticed that there was a man, accompanied by a boy of about thirteen, who didn't need the labels at all.
They were from what I suspect the Queen Mother would call the lower orders. Everything about them murmured poorness and material want - poor diet, poor income, poor dentistry, poor prospects, even poor laundering - but the man was describing the pictures with a fondness and familiarity that were truly heartwarming and the boy was raptly attentive to his every word. 'Now this is a later Goya, you see,' he was saying in a quiet voice. 'Just look at how controlled those brush strokes are - a complete change in style from his earlier work. D'ye remember how I told you that Goya didn't paint a single great picture till he was nearly fifty? Well, this is a great picture.' He wasn't showing off, you understand; he was sharing.
I have often been struck in Britain by this sort of thing - by how mysteriously well educated people from unprivileged backgrounds so often are, how the most unlikely people will tell you plant names in Latin or turn out to be experts on the politics of ancient Thrace or irrigation techniques at Glanum.

In a pub in Glasgow unable to speak the local dialect...
The barman appeared, looking unhappy and wiping his hands on a tea towel.
'Fuckin muckle fucket in the fuckin muckle,' he said to the two men, and then to me in a weary voice: 'Ah hae the noo.' I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement.
'A pint of Tennent's, please,' I said hopefully.
He made an impatient noise, as if I were avoiding his question. 'Hae ya nae hook ma dooky?'
I'm sorry?'
'Ah hae the noo,' said the first customer, who apparently saw himself as my interpreter.
I stood for some moments with my mouth open, trying to imagine what they were saying to me, wondering what mad impulse had bidden me to enter a pub in a district like this, and said in a quiet voice: 'Just a pint of Tennent's, I think.'
The barman sighed heavily and got me a pint. A minute later, I realized that what they were saying to me was that this was the worst pub in the world in which to order lager since all I would get was a glass of warm soap suds, dispensed from a gasping, reluctant tap, and that really I should flee with my life while I could. I drank two sips of this interesting concoction, and, making as if I were going to the Gents', slipped out a side door.

Britain - an amazing country
What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bee and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Lord Chancellor to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a naval hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please, Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to
a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.



We may never go to Britain, but we can thank Bill Bryson for bringing Britain to us.

Enjoy!

Taking a trip with Bill Bryson is always a crap shoot.

Am I getting the funny self-effacing Bill?

Am I getting bilious Bill?

Am I getting drunken Bill on a murderous rampage?

Okay, that last one, sadly, was never published.

Here, Bill wants to get a last look at Great Britain before he moves back to the good ol’ U.S. of A., so he schleps around that island nation taking in the sights. As someone who has been to those environs or thereabouts a few times, Mr. Bryson gets it right and then some. Plus, I laughed out loud on a number of occasions. Good on you, Bill!

This is my fifth Bryson book and his approach/mood is generally all over the place, depending upon the subject of his writing or the type of medication he was currently taking, I suppose.



The crotchety scale looks kind of like this with the books listed from most cantankerous to least tetchy:

1.tThe Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
2.tNeither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
3.tIn a Sunburned County
4.tNotes from a Small Island
5.tA Walk in the Woods

The laughs are inversely proportional to the median or mode or something, as well.

Some of these books I haven’t read in a while so the Irritable-o-meter (TM) might be a tad off and your mileage may vary, so…bite me or something.

This one was a read with my favorite buddy reader of non-fiction and someone who is in the top five people I’d go on some sort of “spree” with, Le Trish.

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