It’s about hanging out with someone who is interesting, thoughtful, funny and alert.Ĭertainly, no travel companion is perfect, and Bryson is smart enough as a writer to include a few cringe-producing moments like those that happen on any trip. It’s about going along for the ride without ever leaving home.Īnd what’s really curious is that it really isn’t so much about the place that’s being visited.

The other type of travel book - such as Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island - isn’t about taking a journey yourself. You use this sort when you are going to a place as a tourist, and it functions as a handy, cleverly packaged, compact database to help you maneuver around.

One sort, such as Fodor’s, is jammed with facts about hotels, trains, battlefields, subways, mileage, restaurants, museums, exchange rates, airports, safety tips, trails, cathedrals, stadiums, cruises, tours, shopping…. Notes From A Small Island contains a wealth of wry observations and pithy insights – albeit recorded almost 30 years ago – that will resonate with a contemporary audience, particularly as Britons reassess their national identity in a post-Brexit, politically turbulent and technology-driven world.īack in 1995, Bill set off on his road-trip to discover “for better and for worse” what might have changed since his first visit to these shores in 1973.There are travel books, and then there are travel books. “This wonderful book has been a firm favourite of mine since its publication, and I’m still pinching myself to believe I’ve been permitted anywhere near it as a playwright!” Tim Whitnall said: “It’s been both a privilege and a delight to have distilled Bill Bryson’s hilarious and affecting 379-page travelogue into a two-act stage play. With signature invention and imagination, the production will embrace the full breadth and playfulness of Bryson’s life-affirming travelogue in The Watermill’s fittingly intimate, quintessentially rural space. Notes from a Small Island spent three years in the Sunday Times bestsellers list, sold over two million copies and was voted on World Book Day by BBC Radio 4 listeners as the book that best represents our British identity. Why does the nation that produced Marmite, Gardener’s Question Time and people who say “Ooh lovely” at the sight of a cup of tea, hold such a special place in this American’s heart? What makes us love this country we call our own?įrom Calais to Scotland, Bill travels the length and breadth of Britain.

Bill bryson island