bill bryson notes from a small island review

It's a place filled with the banal and the everyday, but it's also interspersed with the dazzling, the epic, and the truly extraordinary. Although it was written over two decades ago, Notes from a Small Island is the ultimate travel companion for anyone looking at traveling to the UK. Let's briefly take a journey through the United Kingdom. Bryson has a self-deprecating honest approach to writing, and draws on his own experiences of growing up in a small town.

Growing up in Des Moines, he found himself yearning for a bigger world, and so he embarked on numerous adventures from the supremely ordinary, to the extraordinary. And, for a contemporary reader, it's a fascinating insight into a small island, brimming with history and stories.īill Bryson is a British-American author who has written on travel, language, history, domesticity, and other fascinating non-fiction topics. We join Bryson in exploring a quirky and captivating version of the UK, that we're unlikely to get from anyone else.īy writing in both the past and the present, Bryson weaves together insights into what has changed, and what has stayed the same. Written in 1995, as a way of temporarily bidding farewell to a place he'd called home for two decades, Notes from a Small Island takes us on a proverbial trip down memory lane. Samuel Johnson famously stated: 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.' Bill Bryson extends this sentiment in what can best be described as a love letter to the United Kingdom.

Bill bryson notes from a small island review