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A Journey Through Britain's Eccentric Soul
In 1973, a young American arrived in Dover on a foggy March night, finding himself locked out of hotels and eventually sleeping on a seaside shelter wearing boxer shorts as a makeshift hat. By morning, this traveler had fallen irrevocably in love with Britain - its unfamiliar customs, strange words like "streaky bacon," and the delightful discovery that everyone ate left-handed as he did. This was Bill Bryson's first encounter with the island nation that would become his adopted home for two decades. "Notes from a Small Island" chronicles his farewell journey around Britain before moving back to America with his family - a love letter to a country that, despite its quirks and contradictions, had thoroughly captured his heart. The book became an instant classic, selling over two million copies and being voted by BBC Radio 4 listeners as the book that best represents Britain. Even Prince Charles cited it as required reading for anyone wanting to understand the British psyche, praising Bryson's ability to capture the nation's "characteristic modesty, self-deprecation, irony and understatement."
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The Peculiar British Sense of Distance
There are certain peculiar notions you quietly accept when living in Britain. One is that British summers were once longer and sunnier. Another is that England's football team should easily defeat Norway. The third, most intractable belief is that Britain is a big place.
Mention in a pub that you're driving from Surrey to Cornwall - a distance Americans would casually travel for a taco - and your companions will exchange knowing looks before launching into an elaborate discussion about routes. The conversation quickly descends into mind-numbing detail about laybys, grit boxes, and shortcuts past cement works that allegedly save three or four minutes. Eventually someone will ask when you're planning to leave. Answer "ten o'clock" and they'll react with horror, insisting you should have departed days earlier to avoid half-term traffic or local steam rallies.
The British have a totally private sense of distance, pretending Britain is a lonely island in an empty green sea. Europe exists in the abstract, but isn't nearby in any meaningful sense. British media coverage reinforces this - marginal American figures receive extensive coverage while major European events get eight inches on an inside page. Living in Bournemouth, Bryson was astounded to discover he was closer to Cherbourg than London, but his colleagues refused to accept this geographic reality.
Standing on a Calais beach, he was equally astonished to clearly see the White Cliffs of Dover. After exploring Calais - a town filled with British tourists in shell suits carrying bottles and cheeses - he made the ferry crossing back to Dover. The town had changed dramatically since his first visit, with pedestrianized streets, Georgian terraces replaced by apartment blocks, and a "White Cliffs Experience" attraction added. Finding his bearings when he spotted the cinema where he'd once watched "Suburban Wife-Swap," he caught the next train to London.
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London's Vast and Exhilarating Mystery
London's vastness is immediately apparent from the train - endless grey suburbs stretching from twenty minutes outside Dover, mile after mile of terraced houses and stuccoed semis that all look identical from the train, like sausages squeezed from a machine. Despite living and working in or around London for eight years, it remains a vast and exhilarating mystery to Bryson.
London constantly amazes him - districts he's never heard of after 21 years, an A-Z peppered with obscure village names like Dudden Hill, Snaresbrook, and Vale of Health that seem to multiply each time he looks. The A-Z itself is a marvel, meticulously documenting every cricket ground and sewage works across 45,687 street names, including 21 Gloucester Roads, 74 Victorias, and delightfully peculiar names like Cold Blow Lane, Glimpsing Green, and Nutter Lane.
London truly is the most wonderful city in the world - more beautiful than Paris, more lively than anywhere but New York. It boasts history, parks, theatres, museums, and countless small civilities: red pillar boxes, helpful policemen, blue plaques on houses, benches everywhere. With a few adjustments (removing Heathrow, improving the weather, restoring red phone boxes), it would be perfect.
At The Times in 1981, Bryson enjoyed delightfully slack working conditions - short days, generous expenses, and minimal effort - until Rupert Murdoch arrived with clipboard-wielding Australians. His worst challenge became dealing with Vince from the wire room, a five-foot-six bundle of malevolence who controlled access to the Wall Street report with pizza-flecked threats and primeval breath.
Fleet Street in the early 1980s was utterly out of control. The National Graphical Association decided staffing levels and pay rates with byzantine complexity - printers received bonuses for handling irregular type sizes, edited copy, foreign languages, and even for not doing work done elsewhere. Many earned incomes in Britain's top 2 percent. The madness ended January 24, 1986, when The Times sacked 5,250 union members and moved to Wapping, where terrifying editor Charlie Wilson warned them to work hard or risk anatomical retribution.
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The Underground World of London
Bryson hadn't visited Wapping since leaving in summer 1986, so he eagerly took the Underground to see it again. The Tube remains a marvel - its own subterranean world of strange winds, eerie noises and oily smells, with trains rumbling even deeper below. Most impressive is Harry Beck's perfect Underground Map, which abandoned geographical scale to create an orderly electrical diagram that bears little relation to the actual city above. This distortion creates amusing possibilities - sending visitors on lengthy journeys between stations that are actually just yards apart on the surface.
The Underground's station names sound delightfully sylvan and romantic - Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Maida Vale - allowing Bryson to imagine a semi-mythic city from some golden pre-industrial age rather than the bustling metropolis above. But surfacing at Tower Hill proved disappointing - no tower, no hill, and the Royal Mint replaced by smoked glass buildings.
Walking along the painfully noisy Highway, he was astonished by the ugly new development that had sprung up in just eight years. The News International complex still towered above everything, now surrounded by even more sinister fencing and a maximum-security reception center worthy of a plutonium depot. Inside, he met his former colleague and reminisced about the bitter 1986 dispute when 5,000 workers were sacked. Back then, they worked in a windowless building while violent protests raged outside - a bizarre experience of hearing turmoil but seeing it only on the evening news.
The company had promised swimming pools, squash courts, and modern bars in glossy brochures during the dispute. "We never heard anything more about that," his colleague admitted. "But they've increased our hours - an extra day every fortnight without additional pay."
Walking through Wapping now was refreshingly peaceful. To his surprise, it did feel like the village London claims to be - with cozy street names like Cinnamon Street and Milk Yard, snug council estates, and warehouses smartly renovated as flats. Near Wapping Old Stairs, he gazed at the tranquil river, trying unsuccessfully to imagine this area in previous centuries when wharves teemed with workers and spice barrels that gave surrounding streets their names. As recently as 1960, over 100,000 people worked on the docks. By 1981, every London dock was closed.
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The Joys of Public Transport
Bryson spent a couple more days in London doing nothing particularly notable before embarking on his journey through Britain by public transport. Everyone expressed surprise at his plan, but he couldn't imagine going any other way. Britain has a relatively good system (at least until the Tories finish with it), and driving has become such a dreary experience.
When Bryson first came to Britain, people rarely drove their cars - they just buffed them weekly and occasionally "got the car out" for visits to relatives. Now everyone drives everywhere, though there isn't a single enjoyable aspect of British driving. Take multi-storey car parks: you spend ages finding a space two inches wider than your car, squeeze past pillars collecting dirt on your clothes, hunt for pay machines that don't give change, argue with your spouse, and navigate dungeon-like stairwells or unreliable lifts.
Add to that the other motoring annoyances: aggressive coach drivers, endless roadworks, ineffective traffic lights, overpriced service stations, caravan-towers pulling out at the worst moments, and dawdling drivers collecting mile-long followings. Cars are ugly, dirty, bring out the worst in people, and clutter once-beautiful spaces with petrol stations and secondhand lots.
So Bryson found himself on a long, empty train to Windsor one grey Saturday afternoon. At Twickenham, the platform filled with polite rugby fans carrying programs and tea flasks. They boarded without pushing, apologizing for any accidental bumping - that instinctive British consideration so rarely acknowledged. At Windsor station, an Asian ticket collector thanked every passing passenger in fast motion, while they thanked him in return - a little miracle of orderliness and goodwill unimaginable elsewhere.
Windsor's rain-slick streets were filled with tourists despite the wintry weather. Bryson checked into the Castle Hotel, a higgledy-piggledy place requiring an epic trek through wandering corridors to reach his room, then hurried out to explore before shops closed. He noted changes since he'd last visited - most shops had altered, though Woods of Windsor still sold its endless lavender products. Daniel's, Britain's most interesting department store, remained wonderfully unchanged with its low ceilings, frayed carpets, and odd assortment of goods - from knicker elastic to furniture with missing handles.
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Royal Parks and Aristocratic Eccentricities
The next morning, Bryson rose early with excitement about walking across Windsor Great Park - forty enchanted square miles of primeval woodlands, bosky dells, wandering paths, formal gardens, and a fetching lake. It contains farms, woodland cottages, forgotten statues, a workers' village, and various gifts the Queen has brought back from Commonwealth trips. The park enjoys a mysterious obscurity despite its beauty near London, only making news when Prince Philip took against some ancient trees and had them removed - presumably because they impeded his horse-drawn contraptions.
Once on Boxing Day, while walking with his child on a new tricycle, Bryson realized they were holding up a car driven by Princess Diana. As he hastened them out of the way, she gave him a heart-melting smile. Since then, he's never criticized her, despite her extravagant leotard spending and occasional crank calls to military men.
Bryson walked the aptly named Long Walk from Windsor Castle to the Copper Horse statue of George III atop Snow Hill, where he rested and enjoyed one of England's most beautiful views - the majestic castle three miles distant, with Eton, the Thames Valley and Chiltern Hills beyond. He continued through the park past the Royal Lodge where the Queen and Princess Margaret grew up, eventually reaching Smith's Lawn - surely Britain's finest, perfectly green and heroically proportioned, usually deserted except during polo matches. Another hour brought him to Virginia Water Lake, steaming softly in the morning air - a picturesque creation by the Duke of Cumberland. At the far end stand fake Roman ruins opposite Fort Belvedere, where Edward VIII made his abdication broadcast to marry Wallis Simpson, who struck Bryson as a frankly unlikely choice of shag.
He mentions this because Britain seemed to be experiencing another monarchical crisis. He's never understood British attitudes toward royalty - for years they adored the boring royals, but when they finally became interesting with scandals and drama, everyone wanted to get rid of them. That week, he'd watched a TV panel seriously discuss replacing Prince Charles with young William - missing the whole point of hereditary privilege, which is taking what comes regardless of the heir's qualities or mistress choices.
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The Curious Case of the Wandering Lunatics
Bryson's first sight of Virginia Water came on a sultry August afternoon in 1973, five months after arriving in England. Road-weary from European travels with his friend Stephen Katz, he stepped from a London train and was instantly captivated by the tidy village with its late-afternoon shadows and lush greenness - especially striking to someone fresh from arid climes.
Virginia Water is an interesting place, built mostly in the Twenties and Thirties, with two small parades of shops surrounded by a dense network of private roads winding through Wentworth Golf Course. Scattered among trees are rambling houses often occupied by celebrities, built in what might be called Ostentatious English Vernacular or Game Stab at Lutyens - with busy rooflines, multiple verandas, odd-sized windows, emphatic chimney breasts and trailing roses.
What lent Virginia Water particular charm was that it was full of wandering lunatics from Holloway Sanatorium. Having been resident for years or decades, most patients could be trusted to wander down to the village and find their way back. Each day you'd find a refreshing sprinkling of lunatics buying fags or sweets, having tea or quietly remonstrating with thin air. The shopkeepers and locals were wonderfully accepting, creating an extraordinary community where wealthy people and lunatics mingled on equal terms.
Among the five hundred patients was a remarkable idiot savant named Harry who could instantly tell you the day of the week for any date, past or future. Several times daily, he would ask staff if the hospital was going to close in 1980. Though there were never plans to close the institution, in early 1980 lightning struck the building, causing a devastating fire that rendered it uninhabitable. The patients were transferred to a general hospital in Chertsey, where they lost their freedom due to causing havoc.
For well over a decade, the fine Victorian structure sat crumbling and forlorn. On this visit, Bryson was surprised to find it transformed into "Virginia Park" - a development of executive homes with the restored sanatorium (now mysteriously renamed Crosland House) converted into grand apartments. Houses starting at 350,000 were built of red brick with Victorian touches, looking as if they'd been pupped by the sanatorium. He was pleased that at least the great old building with all its happy memories for him and generations of the interestingly insane had been saved.
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The Quiet Pleasures of English Seaside Towns
Bryson arrived in Bournemouth at five-thirty in the evening in driving rain. Though he'd lived there for two years, the area around the station had been extensively rebuilt with new roads, office blocks and a befuddling network of pedestrian subways. By the time he reached the East Cliff neighborhood of medium-sized hotels, he was soaked through and muttering.
Among the many gleaming palaces of comfort, he selected an establishment on a side-street because he liked its sign: neat capitals in pink neon glowing through the slicing rain. Inside, it was clean, nicely old-fashioned, attractively priced at 26 B&B, and smotheringly warm. After a brief exchange with the cheerfully inattentive reception girl who mistook his name for "Brylcreem," he accepted a key and drippingly found his way to his room.
English hostelries have come remarkably far since 1973. His room had a color TV, coffee-making tray with biscuits, private bath with fluffy towels, and an array of toiletries. He ran a deep bath, emptied all the gels and moisturizing creams into it, and slipped into the self-absorbed habits of the lone traveler - carefully arranging his belongings, draping wet clothes over the radiator, and positioning reading material with exacting precision before enjoying a luxuriant wallow.
Bournemouth is a very fine place in many ways. It has the sea, which will be handy if global warming ever reaches full potential, and sinuous parks collectively known as the Pleasure Gardens that neatly divide the town center. These used to be described as Upper Pleasure Gardens and Lower Pleasure Gardens, until someone realized the unhealthy implications of placing "Lower" and "Pleasure" in such proximity.
Knowing of Bournemouth's reputation for gentility, Bryson moved there in 1977 expecting an English Baden-Baden - manicured parks, palm courts, swank hotels with white-gloved staff, and bosomy elderly ladies in mink coats walking those little dogs you ache to kick. Sadly, little of this awaited him. The parks were fine but offered only a small bandstand with occasional brass bands dressed like bus conductors.
The town center had been extensively pedestrianized since his time there, with curious glass and tubular steel edifices resembling bus shelters for giants. Some shopping arcades had been nicely improved with new establishments like McDonald's and Waterstone's, but mostly things had disappeared - Beale's book department, Dingle's food hall, Bealeson's department store entirely, and most distressingly, an elegant little bakery with the world's best sugar doughnuts.
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Britain's Heritage and Architectural Crimes
Bryson traveled to Salisbury on a swaying double-decker bus that clattered excitingly through overhanging branches on winding country roads. Salisbury is perfectly sized - large enough for cinemas and bookshops, small enough to feel friendly and livable.
Walking through the shopping streets, he noticed all the unattractive elements - Burger Kings, Prontaprints, and Superdrugs crammed thoughtlessly into historic buildings. On one corner stood a half-timbered structure housing a Lunn Poly travel agency - glorious above, but below, between oversized plate glass windows plastered with cheap flight notices, the facade had been desecrated with mosaic tiles that looked salvaged from a King's Cross toilet. He stood wondering what combination of architects, corporate designers and town planners could have permitted such vandalism.
The British seem to have more heritage than is good for them. In a country with such astonishing abundance - 445,000 listed buildings, 12,000 medieval churches, 1.5 million acres of common land, 120,000 miles of footpaths, 600,000 archaeological sites - it's easy to see it as an inexhaustible resource. Bryson's Yorkshire village alone has more seventeenth-century buildings than all of North America. With such overwhelming plenty, people believe they can sacrifice chunks without consequence, but the country is being nibbled to death.
The planning regulations are astoundingly casual. Even in conservation areas, homeowners can replace original doors and windows, cover roofs with hacienda-style tiles, add artificial stone cladding, remove garden walls, and pave over lawns - all while supposedly maintaining the preserved tone of the neighborhood. About the only thing they can't do is demolish the house, though even that restriction is weakly enforced. In 1992, a company in Reading tore down five listed buildings and was fined a mere 675.
Salisbury, to be fair, is better than most towns at preservation, and appears to be improving. The local authorities had recently required a cinema owner to preserve a sixteenth-century half-timbered facade, and Bryson noticed developers carefully restoring buildings that had been despoiled during the architectural dark ages of the 1960s and 70s.
He would forgive Salisbury anything as long as they never alter the Cathedral Close - undoubtedly the most beautiful space in England, surrounding the single most beautiful structure. Every stone, wall, and shrub is perfect, as if everyone who has touched it for 700 years has only enhanced it.
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Prehistoric Wonders and Modern Inconveniences
After visiting Salisbury Museum's outstanding Stonehenge Gallery, Bryson reflected on what an incredible accomplishment Stonehenge was - 500 men pulling each fifty-ton sarsen stone eighteen miles, plus 100 more positioning rollers. Imagine convincing 600 people to help with such a task, then saying, "Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and bluestones from Wales, and we can party!" Whoever was behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator.
When Bryson visited Stonehenge itself, he found things had changed since his last visit in the early seventies. They've built a smart new gift shop and coffee bar, though still no interpretation center - understandable for merely the most important prehistoric monument in Europe and one of England's most visited attractions. The biggest change is that visitors can no longer approach the stones directly. Now a discreet rope keeps you at a considerable distance, which actually improves the experience by leaving the brooding stones in undisturbed glory rather than lost among crowds of daytrippers.
Impressive as Stonehenge is, after about eleven minutes you realize you've seen all you care to, then spend another forty minutes walking around the perimeter out of politeness and determination to get your money's worth. Eventually Bryson retreated to the gift shop, had coffee in a styrofoam cup, then waited for the bus back to Salisbury, wondering both why they couldn't provide benches and where on earth he might go next.
The bus timetables were discouraging. The first bus to Stonehenge didn't leave until nearly eleven, making his plan to visit both Stonehenge and Avebury in one day impossible. Many substantial communities had no rail service at all - Marlborough, Devizes, Amesbury. Bus schedules rarely interconnected meaningfully, and services to places like Lacock were so infrequent that you could stay either fourteen minutes or seven hours.
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The Endearing Peculiarities of British Life
Among life's many mysteries, one particularly baffles Bryson: who first looked at sand and thought to make glass? You could strand him on a beach forever and he'd never think to mix it with potash and heat it to create a transparent solid. While he admires sand's transformation potential, he loathes it in its natural state - it blows in your face, ruins sandwiches, swallows keys, burns feet, and sticks to wet skin with impossible tenacity. Yet mysteriously, it falls right off the moment you step onto a towel or carpet, only to reappear days later when you remove your shoes.
But he'll make an exception for Studland Beach, where he found himself after a brainstorm on the Salisbury bus. Years ago, he'd promised himself he'd walk the Dorset coast path, and here he was on a glorious autumn morning with a newly purchased walking stick, having just disembarked the Sandbanks ferry. The day was perfect - blue sea covered with dancing spangles, drifting clouds white as bedsheets, and the houses of Sandbanks looking almost Mediterranean in the clear air.
British place names provide Bryson endless satisfaction. He finds deep pleasure in pub names like The Eagle and Child, football team names like Sheffield Wednesday and Queen of the South, and the mystifying poetry of shipping forecasts.
Britain has some 30,000 place names, many delightfully evocative: villages suggesting lazy summer afternoons (Winterbourne Abbas, Theddlethorpe All Saints), places hiding dark secrets (Husbands Bosworth, Rime Intrinseca), and names resembling toilet cleaners (Potto, Sanahole) or skin complaints (Scabcleuch, Whiterashes).
Some regions specialize in themes - Kent favors foodstuffs (Ham, Sandwich), Dorset prefers Barbara Cartland-esque characters (Bradford Peverell, Langton Herring), while Lincolnshire seems slightly unhinged (Thimbleby Langton, Sots Hole, Spitall in the Street). Often these places cluster together, like the area south of Cambridge containing Bio Norton, Rickinghall Inferior, Hellions Bumpstead, Ugley and Bryson's favorite, Shellow Bowells.
He also marvels at the 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey maps with their extraordinary detail - every wrinkle in the landscape, every barn, milestone, wind pump and tumulus. They distinguish between sand pits and gravel pits, between power lines on pylons versus poles. One even showed the stone seat beneath him. It astounds him to know precisely where his buttocks are deployed.
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Finding Home in the Yorkshire Dales
After many adventures across Britain, Bryson found himself on the Settle-to-Carlisle railway line - famously obscure yet celebrated, perpetually threatened with closure by British Rail's absurd argument that it doesn't pay its way. This reasoning is madness - most worthwhile things don't pay for themselves. By this logic, we'd eliminate traffic lights, schools, museums, and old people. Why should a railway line, more agreeable than old people and less inclined to bitch and twitter, need economic viability?
The line has always seemed folly. In 1870, James Allport of Midland Railway decided to build a main line north through the middle of nowhere, despite existing east and west coast lines. The 3.5 million project (an astronomical sum in today's money) required twenty viaducts and twelve tunnels through bleak Pennine terrain. This wasn't some eccentric narrow-gauge line but the nineteenth century's bullet train - for passengers who never materialized.
Bryson pressed his face to the window, eagerly awaiting famous landmarks: Blea Moor Tunnel (nearly 2,300 yards), Dent Station (Britain's highest), and the glorious Ribblehead Viaduct (quarter-mile long, 104 feet high, twenty-four graceful arches). Between these marvels stretched the Yorkshire Dales - his personal landscape obsession. He can't explain why the Dales captivated him so completely when he first saw them. Perhaps it's the exhilarating contrast between high fells with endless views and lush valley floors with clustered villages. Or maybe it's the snug self-containment the enclosing hills provide, making the outside world seem far away and unnecessary.
Each dale forms its own little world. He recalled when a car flipped outside their gate - the driver hanging upside down, bleeding gently and muttering about missing her dentist appointment. While Bryson hyperventilated uselessly, two farmers arrived, extracted the lady, righted the car, cleaned up the mess, and disappeared - all in under five minutes, without involving police, ambulance or doctor. Things happen differently in the Dales.
People who know you simply walk into your house there - sometimes with a cursory knock and "Hullo!" but often not even that. He's lost count of times he's had to dart into the pantry in his underpants at someone's approach, cowering while they examined fridge messages and held mail to the light before announcing, "Just taking six eggs, Bill - all right?"
When they told London friends they were moving to Yorkshire, many made sour faces: "Yorkshire? With Yorkshire people? How interesting..." He's never understood Yorkshire's reputation for meanness. He's found the people decent and open - though they won't smother you with affection like Midwesterners bringing welcome pies. Instead, they gradually find a corner for you in their hearts, acknowledging you with the subtle "Malhamdale wave" - a barely perceptible index finger extension while gripping the steering wheel.
Глава 13
A Love Letter to Britain
As Bryson's journey through Britain came to an end, his wife met him at Settle station, and they drove home over the tops - a winding six-mile drive of unutterable loveliness. Halfway down, he asked to stop at his favorite viewpoint. From there he could see almost all of Malhamdale - sheltered beneath steep hills, with drystone walls climbing impossible slopes, clustered hamlets, the two-room schoolhouse, the old church with sycamores, his local pub's roof, and their stone house, older than his native land.
In that moment, he realized what he loved about Britain - all of it. Every bit: Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying "mustn't grumble" and apologizing when he conks them, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles, drizzly Sundays - everything.
What a wondrous, crazy-as-fuck, adorable place. What other country could produce place names like Tooting Bee and Farleigh Wallop, or cricket matches lasting three days? Who else would make judges wear little mops, seat the Lord Chancellor on something called the Woolsack, or venerate a naval hero whose dying wish was to kiss Hardy "full on the lips"? What nation gave us Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners' Question Time and chocolate digestive biscuits? None but Britain.
How easily we forget this. Britain fought a noble war, dismantled an empire benignly, created a far-seeing welfare state - did nearly everything right - then spent the rest of the century seeing itself as a failure. Yet this remains the best place to post a letter, walk, watch television, buy books, drink, visit museums, use banks, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside taking in a view.
Bryson turned from the gate and got in the car, knowing without doubt that he would be back.
