Product Description

After eleven years living as an American in London, Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise round the coast and find out what Britain and the British are really like. It was 1982, the summer of the Falklands War and the royal baby, and the ideal time, he found, to surprise the British into talking about themselves. The result is vivid and absolutely riveting reading. 'A sharp and funny descriptive writer. One of his golden talents, perhaps because he is American and therefore classless in British eyes, is the ability to chat up and get on with all sorts ...' - "The Times".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14014 in Books
• Published on: 1985-02-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
After The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, Bournemouth and Aberdeen are pretty tame - and fairly depressing - territory. But Theroux, tired of London and surprisingly little-traveled after eleven years of largely English residence, decided to follow the British coast, on foot or by train; and his annotated itinerary, though neither as exotic nor as memorably peopled as those previous journeys, offers a gently engaging, utterly unromantic look at eroding shorelines . . .and ways of life. Things are unlovely right from the start: on the May Day train to Margate skinheads assault the genteel seaside-goers with noisy obscenity. ("Daddy, why are those men saying 'fuck off'?") Dreary resort-towns predominate as Theroux trudges clockwise. The bed-and-breakfast phenomenon is, at its rare best, "like a perfect marriage; at its worst, it was like a night with terrible in-laws." All along the coast there seem to be old people in parked cars staring seaward, "as sad captains fixing their attention upon the waves." And so it goes - from Portsmouth to Plymouth to tourist-hating Cornwall - with talk of the new Falklands War, a tense little dialogue with a racist South African couple, and one or two nice surprises. (Grand, elegant Weymouth; the Teignmouth Operatic Society's production of The Pajama Game.) Then, after a visit to a holiday camp that reminds Theroux of Jonestown, it's on to Wales: the ubiquitous caravans, the "mildly stunned and slaphappy" people, a visit with Jan Morris, and a nightmarish night in an empty hotel (one of many) among the drunken "savages" of Cardigan. Next: up the west coast - from Liverpool's worst, racism-scarred neighborhood to Orwell's Wigan (no unjust working conditions now - because there's no work), with a glimpse of "the scariest-looking nuclear reactor I had ever seen." And, after an unsympathetic side-trip to Ulster's "tribal warfare," there's the scenic, Scottish-coast extravagaza, a fine ride in a post bus, fear and loathing in boom-town Aberdeen (expensive, dull, selfish), and - amid a rail strike - down the east coast to Southend's pier. The overall impression? "If I had only one word to describe the expression on England's face I would have said: insulted." A trifle cute, a trifle patronizing - but often vivid, with that grand ear for dialogue, and an effective dark complement to Frank Entwisle's cheerier Abroad in England (p. 689). (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
After eleven years living as an American in London, Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise round the coast and find out what Britain and the British are really like. It was 1982, the summer of the Falklands War and the royal baby, and the ideal time, he found, to surprise the British into talking about themselves. The result is vivid and absolutely riveting reading. 'A sharp and funny descriptive writer. One of his golden talents, perhaps because he is American and therefore classless in British eyes, is the ability to chat up and get on with all sorts ...' - "The Times".

About the Author
Paul Theroux was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941, and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His subsequent novels include Picture Palace, winner of the Whitbread Prize for Fiction, The Mosquito Coast, and the hugely acclaimed, Kowloon Tong. His travel books include The Great Railway Bazaar and The Pillars of Hercules.

Customer Reviews

Maybe selective, but not inaccurate
Oh for the ability to see ourselves as others see us!

Kingdom by the Sea seems to have upset many readers. Although, more than just about any other race on the planet, the English are whip-sharp when it comes to poking fun at themselves, like most of us they don't want an outsider doing it for them.

Not that Theroux is an outsider by any means. He lived in England for 11 years and married an Englishwoman. So this book doesn't describe the initial impressions of some passer-by. It's an informed, if narrowly-focused, description of parts of the UK and the people who live there, by somebody who has developed a keen ear for the language and a sharp eye for the quirks that make Britain unique. In a more recent travel book, Pillars of Hercules, Theroux recalls this earlier work as follows: "Prejudices in Gibraltar were quite similar to those I had encountered in English seaside resorts, an enjoyable mixture of bluster and wrong-headedness, the Little Englander in full spate." It's that Little Englander who bears the brunt of Theroux's humour, the same person who provided so much material for Monty Python, the same person ridiculed in the film "Shirley Valentine".

It's hard to dispute the accuracy of Theroux's descriptions of coastal Britain twenty years ago, if not today. Lines of cars on the prom gazing seaward; scuzzy holiday camps; criminally-overpriced and substandard accommodation; yobos on public transit swearing in loud voices while the other passengers pretend they're not there; cozy, picturesque coves and garish amusement arcades; ubiquitous "shallies", their occupants glued to evening TV. Of course, this is a selective snapshot taken at a particular time (Britain was at war with the Falklands) but no less incisive for that reason. And while Theroux is not slow to adopt a gently mocking style with many of the people he meets, he is ready to admire or sympathize with others. His description of the people of Cape Wrath is particularly touching.

Those familiar with his writings will find the style familiar. Whether in Africa, Australia, the Pacific or his own America, he can be acerbic and as wrongheaded as his Little Englanders. He has no intention of reinforcing anybody's view of any country he visits. He takes his own angle and, right or wrong, he's consistent. Bouquets and brickbats are handed around without regard to race, sex or social standing. As he quotes on one book: "No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived."

I lived in England for 26 years and traveled extensively through the UK apart from Ireland. Kingdom by the Sea is as realistic an overview of 1980's Britain as you're likely to read, and a superb counter-balance to many of the long-established travel brochure images.

An ill-disguised 'hatchet job'.
I have read a number of the author's other travel books so I had an inkling of what to expect before starting this one. There is no doubt that he is a skillful writer and a learned and well-travelled man. However, on this occasion he has delivered only a cynical and pessimistic diatribe.
The dedication at the beginning (not even his own, but adapted from Charles Dickens: "I dedicate this book to those friends of mine in Britain who...loving their country, can bear the truth, when it is told good-humouredly and in a kind spirit.") smacks of a guilty afterthought -
for there is certainly no evidence of good humour or kind-spiritedness in the book which follows.
He had lived in Britain for 11 years prior to his journey around its coast and obviously takes great delight in pointing out how 'the mighty' have fallen, and how far...(I don't know whether he remained in Britain afterwards, but we have come a long way since then !)
A couple of specific gripes that I have with this book are firstly, that there is no balance. He makes meticulous lists of what he dislikes (childish and unnecessary) and has a corresponding inclination to gloss over anything which he does (very grudginly) admit to admiring.
The second gripe is the inconsistency. For example, his tiresome obsession with trains leads him to take a completely unnecessary return train journey across Cornwall (at the expense of missing out the vast majority of the county) and yet at other times he refuses to deviate, even slightly, from his 'coast-only' route when it would clearly liven up the book !
All in all, this was a thoroughly disappointing book which seems to have been motivated mainly by a desire to 'stick one' on the British.

Kingdom by the Sea
I have to say I'm surprised by some of the customer reviews on this book. Could it be perhaps they hadn't read a Paul Theroux book before and didn't know what to expect? UK fans of Theroux's misanthropic, razor-sharp observations should have no qualms about the author turning his sights on Britain. Yes, 'The Kingdom by the Sea' is full of monstrous characateurs and Philip Larkin-esque mockery but, more importantly, brilliant observational and descriptive writing . Theroux manages (just) to make the rather relentless and tedious exercise of circumnavigating the British coast contstantly engaging and funny. As with (the also often misinterpreted) Larkin there is empathy beneath the cynicism. Theroux has a good eye for character and, for an American, a good ear for Britain's regional vernacular.

If you want travel writing that idealises its destinations then this is clearly not for you. If you want something balanced and objective this is also a poor bet. Paul Theroux's books don't pretend to be such things, although he makes some lofty claims about hoping to understand the British people and culture in the introduction. If you are familiar with his writing you will know that his books say just as much about the author than about his subjects; the writer Graham Greene described as having 'a chip of ice' in his heart. Theroux can be grumpy and brutal, but never less than engaging. Some of the reviewers make it sound like this book has wounded their national pride. I would be surprised if they don't at least recognize the Britain portrayed in these pages. He captures the national mood at a very definitive time: high unemployment and class conflict, the Falklands, British Rail, skin heads and mods. What is most striking about this novel is how much things in many ways have changed in the 15 years since then, and also how much has not.