The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

He’s better when he’s harrumphing, whether at the officiousness of the National Trust or the half-wittedness of highway engineers, and he’s entitled to harrumph now he’s 63 and a British citizen. Svetlana Alexievich's Nobel win sends a stern message to Putin In Devon, where the railway isn’t what it was in the Sixties (cue three unsurprising pages on Richard Beeching), he goes to Torquay and is reduced to standing in front of the comedian Peter Cook’s house “without anything like a real thought in my head”. He hadn’t seen the Lost Gardens of Heligan, but more than five million people have, and might be disappointed that his contribution is that “they are splendid and thronged” and “all very fine”. Yes, there’s nothing “more brave and noble” than the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, but he didn’t need to go all the way to Mousehole and retell the story of the Penlee lifeboat disaster to remind us. The Pie at Night by Stuart Maconie, review: 'chippy' That focus turns out to be a weakness, because many of the places that are new to him, while full of good stories, have long ago had those stories wrung out of them by others, and a pinballing tourist has little to add. Having established that the longest distance you can travel in Britain in a straight line lies between Bognor Regis and Cape Wrath, Bryson starts at one and finishes at the other, but pinballs across the country in between, focusing on places he hasn’t visited before and avoiding, as much as possible, those where he might end up “harrumphing at how things had deteriorated”. Margaret Thatcher by Charles Moore review: 'enthralling' In a chapter on the Peak District there’s a cracker about the dumb faithfulness of the British dog.

There are lame ones and good ones, but they generally get better as the book goes on. Is it the funniest travel book I’ve read all year? Of course it is, if only because there are so many gags per page. A week before publication, The Road to Little Dribbling was ranked by a certain online retailer at number five in “Books” and number one in “Travel Books”, while still only available to “pre-order” – not a phrase of which the author, a stickler for correct usage, is likely to approve. But, as his publisher reminded him, it’s 20 years since he wrote that: “ ‘Ever thought about a sequel?’ His tone was casual, but in his eyes I could see little glinting pound signs where his irises normally were.”ġ1 things you didn't know about the Brontës Notes from a Small Island, his 1995 voyage around Britain, was the most successful travel book ever, with 2.5 million copies sold to date. Every book he writes, whether on the English language or popular science or travel, is a bestseller. In case you’ve somehow missed him, Bill Bryson is the American-born author the British have licensed to poke fun at them.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson