When Bill Bryson and his wife decided to pack up their four kids and move from England to the United States, Bill, an American Anglophile, set off on a farewell tour of the country he had adopted as a young man just out of college. Notes From a Small Island is the story of his adventures and misadventures.
About to set off on my own adventure on that same small island in 2004, I found this book at Borders and thought I'd give it a try. It was the only book that went to England with me (and then I bought about 3,592 books while there, not including those that I borrowed from Kathy, my English Mum), and it was one I made sure came home with me a year later.
Notes From a Small Island is, from start to finish, a hilarious, affectionate and accurate portrayal of the ways of Britain and the British.
If you've never read anything by Bill Bryson, run, don't walk, to your local bookseller, or get online and buy anything he's written (except, maybe, for A Short History of Nearly Everything, if you, like me, don't care much for science). Bryson's humor and ability to take the mickey (a Britishism, there) out of any culture while never truly causing offense is entertaining beyond words.
And he sums up, quite neatly, how I feel about England:
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