Notes From A Small Island

Bill Bryson is the author of numerous books, including The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990); A Walk in the Woods (1998); and A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003). He announced his retirement from writing in 2020, though he subsequently released an audiobook. Bryson’s style typically employs humor to highlight his personal observations and journalistic explorations. In Notes from a Small Island, Bryson travels across the island of Great Britain, a place where he is both an insider (he has lived there for 20 years at the time of writing) and an outsider (he is American by birth). This offers him a unique perspective on the cultural traditions and deeply layered history of his adoptive nation. After the publication of Notes from a Small Island, he eventually became a dual citizen of the US and England, honored with the Order of the British Empire in 2006.

The book also functions as a kind of bildungsroman, retracing Bryson’s first forays into England and into his career in journalism. As Bryson recalls his first night in Dover, sleeping on a bench near the harbor, he remembers himself as “a young man with more on his mind than in it” (8). He was young and naïve, and his experience was necessarily limited; England symbolized independence, with all the foreboding and excitement that comes with it. He remembers those days in 1973 as historically significant (though he only realizes this in retrospect) and personally challenging: “England was full of words I’d never heard before” (14), and “I was positively radiant with ignorance” (14). The word “radiant” ironically conveys the suggestion that he was joyfully aware of his ignorance, eager to learn whatever he needed in order to survive, and thrive, on this island nation.

He embarked upon his career as a journalist during his early days in England. He began as a subeditor, a position he describes as “very agreeably unlike work” (35). As the newspaper business changed and Bryson matured, this carefree attitude melted away. He met his wife in England and began raising a family. Thus, he embarked on what he calls “my first real job in Britain” at the Bournemouth Evening Echo (73). This work eventually led to the kind of writing that has made him a well-known figure on both sides of the Atlantic.

He frequently turns his satirical eye upon himself, not just his home and adoptive countries. When he talks about enjoying drinks at the local pub, for example, he remarks that this is a place where “you can be among laughing, lively young people and lose yourself in reveries of what it was like when you, too, had energy and a flat stomach” (136). His travels induce nostalgia, though he never takes himself too seriously. Later, he tells the reader that, should he ever be ennobled, his title should be “Lord Lather of Indecision” (169). Part of the process of growing up, his self-mockery implies, is accepting one’s foibles with good humor and grace.

Bryson has not only penned numerous nonfiction works, in which he almost always places himself at the center of the narrative, but he has also served as the Chancellor of Durham University and president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. He holds honorary doctorates from several distinguished universities in Great Britain and has won numerous literary awards, including the Descartes Prize for A Short History of Nearly Everything. Apart from an eight-year hiatus in New Hampshire (1995-2003), Bryson has spent his adult life in England. As he acknowledges of his small island, with uncharacteristic understatement, “I like it here” (317). He confesses at the end of the book that he will return—and, indeed, he keeps that promise, and then some.