Notes From A Small Island

“The fact is that the British have a totally private sense of distance. This is most visibly seen in the shared pretense that Britain is a lonely island in the idle of an empty green sea. Of course, the British are all aware, in an abstract sort of way, that there is a substantial landmass called Europe nearby and that from time to time it is necessary to go over there to give old Jerry [slang term for German] a drubbing or have a holiday in the sun, but it’s not nearby in any meaningful sense in the way that, say, Disney World is.”

The author implicitly reveals the cultural insularity of his small island, not just its isolated location. The comment about Europe’s relative distance to Great Britain is ironic in the context of a post-Brexit political and economic situation; Britain has effectively severed ties with Europe. Of course, Bryson’s intention here is to use hyperbole for humorous effect, a strategy he employs often.

“London remains a vast and exhilarating mystery to me. I lived and worked in or around it for eight years, watched the local news on television, read the evening papers, ranged extensively through its streets to attend weddings and retirement parties or go on harebrained quests for bargains in far-flung salvage yards and still I find that there are great fragments of it that I have not just never visited but never heard of.”

An outsider, by definition, cannot ever possibly hope to have inside information about their destination. No matter how long the author resides in Britain, he will always be an American. He exists in the liminal space between visitor and long-term resident.

“In London, by contrast, the names nearly always sound sylvan and beckoning: Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Bromley-by-Bow, Maida Vale, Drayton Park. That isn’t a city up there, it’s a Jane Austen novel. It’s easy to imagine that you are shuttling about under a semimythic city from some golden pre-industrial age.”

Bryson speaks of the London Underground, the network of train lines that weaves underneath the city. London’s stops sound like Arcadian wonderlands rather than urban boroughs. It becomes easier to mythologize a city when it applies 18th-century nomenclature to its modern developments.