The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain by Paul Theroux is in the Top Ten Books about Britain, Britishness, and the Brits.

I think this is a book I'll need to reread at a different point, when I'm less edgy and can better appreciate Theroux's travel narrative. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. Theroux's departures from resorts (to Liverpool, Belfast, Ulster) are among the most interesting parts of the book. Next second, he had broken from their hands, and was running up another garden path like a terrified rabbit. He remembered the smashing blow as the ground hit his chin; the painful week after, not able to eat with a bitten tongue.I very much enjoyed his train trips- I often thought of the Thomas the Tank Engine series that my children loved with branch lines and steam engines and beautiful countryside. Nowhere in Britain is more than 65 miles from the sea so he decided his route would be round the coast.

But Jack (his son) always said that anyone of ill-will could soon smash a door or a window open, and he'd be in a rage by the time he'd got inside. The Kingdom by the Sea is now, of course, a period piece, and Theroux natural talent for misery and depressiveness is ideally suited to depicting the Kingdom of 1982, the time of the Falklands War, the gloomy hardships of Thatcherite depression with huge unemployment, empty hotels and closed factories, the destruction of industry, the Northern Irish 'troubles' in full bloom, the looming end of the railway network. As a result, the book is full of observations on the English, the Scot, the Welsh, and the northern Irish.Bei so vielen Kritikpunkten und wenig, was mir gefallen hat, bleibt nur ein durchwachsener Eindruck zurück. He does get things wrong: from, famously now, claiming that there is no pier in Wigan to stating that crowdie is equivalent to porridge and a crofter is some old fashioned way of describing a tenant farmer. It is how he chooses to combat all these challenges, and overcome his own weaknesses that make this book well worth reading, for children and adults.

He starts in Margate after an eventful train trip down there and clockwise he goes taking in Cornwall, Wales, Liverpool, Northern Ireland (troubles are still going), Scotland and many places in-between and beyond. The use of language is often impressive and thought-provoking but language is like a picture frame - no matter how wonderful, it can not mask a weak painting - in fact it seems to accentuate the failings of the picture. The book has many themes loss, survival, relationships, nature and all are dealt with sensitively and wisely.The big roll of blankets, wrapped in a groundsheet because the shelter was damp, done up with a big leather strap of Dad’s.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. Sometimes he thought he would go home, and Dulcie would be swinging on the front gate, shouting rude things at the big boys as they passed, but running to the safety of Mam’s kitchen if they made a move to attack her.In the beginning of the book, when he meets up with a stray dog, I was sure that this book was going to make me cry. He wants to discover the real Britain, so travels mostly by walking or using the train and talks to people he meets along the way. Even more than normally, his book is very slight on information, strong on description and dominated by the author's perceptions, feelings and judgements. The challenge of Globalization and the emerging Chinese manufacturing behemoth forced her to make drastic changes. He went through another gate, over the top of another air-raid shelter, through a hedge that scratched him horribly … on, and on, and on.