Notes from a Small Island
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Notes From A Small Island cover |
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Author | Bill Bryson |
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Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Publisher | {{{publisher}}} |
Released | 1995 |
ISBN | 0-552-99600-9 |
Notes from a Small Island is a travel book by Bill Bryson. It was written when the author was due to move back to his native United States but decided to take one final trip around Great Britain, which had been his home for over twenty years. Bryson covers all corners of the island, observing and talking to people from Land's End (the southwest) to John O'Groats (the north-western Scottish tip), to London. The reader is left with an appreciation for British people's traits of order, industry, fortitude, and tolerance of hardships.
The book, published in 1995, is often regarded as being the book that best describes British culture and British people. In it, Bryson expressed amazement at the heritage in Britain, stating that there are (or were at the time of writing) 445,000 listed buildings, 12,000 medieval churches, 1,500,000 acres of common land, 120,000 miles of footpaths, and public rights-of-way, 600,000 known sites of archaeological interest and that in his Yorkshire village at that time, there were more 17th-century buildings than in the whole of North America.
In a 2003 Poll, it was voted by English people as the book which best represented England.[1]
The book was adapted for Carlton Television in 1998.
[edit] References
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2824715.stm BBC reports 2003 poll.
Bill Bryson |
Selected bibliography |
Travel: The Lost Continent - Neither Here Nor There - Notes from a Small Island - A Walk in the Woods - Notes from a Big Country - Down Under - African Diary - Walk About |
Language: The Mother Tongue - Made in America - Dictionary of Troublesome Words |
Science: A Short History of Nearly Everything |
Memoir: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid |