They were talking about this on a podcast a few weeks ago, and I was vaguely aware of it but had never considered it as a read. I still think of myself as not much of a fan of travel writing, but that is obviously not true. Anne Applebaum's 'Between East and West' changed that a decade or so ago, and the truth is I've read and enjoyed plenty of travel writing. I mean to go back and reread Applebaum, btw, note to self. 'The Kingdom By The sea' was Theroux's circumnavigation of the UK by foot, train and bus and was glorious. He's a curmudgeonly sort, very insightful and funny, but with complete disdain for people. He cannot be bothered to learn or remember the names of people he meets and just makes them up, or gives them a name he thinks suitable to them like Dickens. He gets fed up of the tour too, with chapters and chapters on Kent at the beginning of the trip and the whole of the east coast from Edinburgh to Southend distilled down into a very quick and cursory section.
It was a time capsule too, he wrote at the time of the Falklands conflict, so within my living memory, but still post-war Britain with grotty hotels, terrible food and veterans of the Boer War and WWI still around, with millions who had experienced the Second World War.
No comments:
Post a Comment