The Road to Little Dribbling Chronicles the Further Adventures of Bill Bryson in Britain
With his wry sense of humor, keen observations, and ability to connect a place’s history with its present, Bill Bryson makes for an excellent travel companion. We’ve accompanied him through the small towns of America in The Lost Continent, across Europe in Neither Here Nor There, along the Appalachian Trail in A Walk in the Woods, and to his adopted homeland of England in Notes from a Small Island. In his new book, The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain—the author’s first travel book in 15 years—Bryson brings readers back to the U.K. as he prepares to become a British citizen. And it’s just in time for the 20th anniversary of Notes from a Small Island.
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
Hardcover $28.95
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
By Bill Bryson
Hardcover $28.95
Not wanting to simply repeat the journey he took in his first U.K. tome, Bryson loosely follows a North-South route along what he dubs the Bryson Line from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath. And, as is his preferred method for experiencing and discovering a locale, he does much of his travel by foot, noting that he “read once that the furthest distance the average American will walk without getting into a car is 600 feet, and I fear the modern British have become much the same, except that on the way back to the car the British will drop some rubbish and get a tattoo.”
Along his journey, he discovers some things have changed since his first jaunt around England, but the eccentric things he loves about the country mostly remain. And, naturally, Bryson himself has changed a bit—he’s a little grumpier, with perhaps a bit less patience for people and places he finds bewildering, but his writing remains laugh-out-loud funny, and his impeccable storytelling is intact.
As usual, Bryson manages to incorporate a great deal of quirky and interesting facts and history into his own personal narrative, educating as well as entertaining his readers. Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn as you travel with Bryson:
- It is entirely possible to be hit in the head by an automatic parking barrier and not die from it.
- Cows (allegedly) kill many more people than bulls do—four people in Britain were trampled and killed by cows over just one eight-week period in 2009.
- Mount Everest was named for George Everest, a man who never saw the mountain and incidentally didn’t even pronounce his name Ev-er-est, but Eve-rest.
- Bryson lived next door to Ringo Starr, but didn’t know it for about six months.
- Alice Liddell, who inspired Alice Through the Looking Glass, ended up an ill-tempered recluse.
- Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is buried in Bournemouth with her parents, per her own request, despite only having visited there once.
- Bryson loathes the way in which many people mispronounce Brett Favre’s name, as through the r comes before the v. (Nor is he a fan of Favre himself.)
- British food is not as bad as its reputation; a lot of it is just poorly named. See: bubble and squeak, bangers and mash, clotted cream.
- A university chancellor is “like a bidet. Everyone is pleased to have one, but no one knows quite what they are for.”
- There’s actually an academic term for being too stupid to appreciate just how stupid you are. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and Bryson has the unfortunate luck of running into a great many people suffering from this particular affliction.
Not wanting to simply repeat the journey he took in his first U.K. tome, Bryson loosely follows a North-South route along what he dubs the Bryson Line from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath. And, as is his preferred method for experiencing and discovering a locale, he does much of his travel by foot, noting that he “read once that the furthest distance the average American will walk without getting into a car is 600 feet, and I fear the modern British have become much the same, except that on the way back to the car the British will drop some rubbish and get a tattoo.”
Along his journey, he discovers some things have changed since his first jaunt around England, but the eccentric things he loves about the country mostly remain. And, naturally, Bryson himself has changed a bit—he’s a little grumpier, with perhaps a bit less patience for people and places he finds bewildering, but his writing remains laugh-out-loud funny, and his impeccable storytelling is intact.
As usual, Bryson manages to incorporate a great deal of quirky and interesting facts and history into his own personal narrative, educating as well as entertaining his readers. Here are just a few of the things you’ll learn as you travel with Bryson:
- It is entirely possible to be hit in the head by an automatic parking barrier and not die from it.
- Cows (allegedly) kill many more people than bulls do—four people in Britain were trampled and killed by cows over just one eight-week period in 2009.
- Mount Everest was named for George Everest, a man who never saw the mountain and incidentally didn’t even pronounce his name Ev-er-est, but Eve-rest.
- Bryson lived next door to Ringo Starr, but didn’t know it for about six months.
- Alice Liddell, who inspired Alice Through the Looking Glass, ended up an ill-tempered recluse.
- Frankenstein author Mary Shelley is buried in Bournemouth with her parents, per her own request, despite only having visited there once.
- Bryson loathes the way in which many people mispronounce Brett Favre’s name, as through the r comes before the v. (Nor is he a fan of Favre himself.)
- British food is not as bad as its reputation; a lot of it is just poorly named. See: bubble and squeak, bangers and mash, clotted cream.
- A university chancellor is “like a bidet. Everyone is pleased to have one, but no one knows quite what they are for.”
- There’s actually an academic term for being too stupid to appreciate just how stupid you are. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and Bryson has the unfortunate luck of running into a great many people suffering from this particular affliction.