Twenty years since ‘Notes from a Small
Island’ was published Bill Bryson takes time, and a trip, to re-appraise the
state of his adopted nation, and finds like many of his generation, it is
slipping slowly away from his understanding.
The notional geographical peg for his wildly
meandering route is a straight line that is the longest possible within
mainland Britain, running from Bognor Regis on the south coast to Cape Wrath in
the far north of Scotland. Fear not
those of you off this corridor for he still visits a place close to you.
His observations are inevitably shot with perspicacity,
wit and laugh out loud humour. From sitting
his British citizenship test at Eastleigh to his bemused arrival at Cape Wrath
lighthouse he both celebrates and pokes fun at the British way of life.
So far, so Bryson; but as is often the case the
acquisition a bus pass leads to an onset of grumpiness, which surfaces often in
this volume. He rails at many changes in
society – the decline of the high street, the ubiquity yet uselessness of
computers, the intrusive noisiness of folk on mobile phones – that rankle,
before shrugging them off and continuing his search for the positive.
As well as humour and grumpiness is a rich vein
of informative storytelling as he roots out little known or under-reported
facts, such as the ‘system’ for numbering roads, and sheds light on local people
and places whose position in history has undeservedly been neglected.
Funny, wise, acerbic, informative, and above
all entertaining.
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