When I was in Budapest recently, in a cafe, drinking my coffee, I saw a man with a sort of cart full of second hand books outside. I asked him if he had any English books and he pointed me to a section. I purchased Paul Theroux’s Kingdom by the Sea for a bit over £1.

Paul Theroux is an American who had lived some years in London before deciding to travel around the English coast (without a car) in a clockwise direction. The book itself reminded me a bit of Julian Baggini’s ‘Everytown.’ He ends up visiting Cornwall, Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and then the East English coast before ending the book.

The book is set during the Falklands war and Mr Theroux expresses his arguments against the war well against a backdrop of mindless patriotism by tabloid reading English working class.

Mr Theroux visits places such as Butlins, Liverpool after the race riots, Belfast (with its Catholic Protestant divide), he even gets to Oban (the town I grew up in).

Mr Theroux seems to have a wonderful ability of striking up conversation with people on the road. He stays in Bed and Breakfasts and cheap hotels generally and often walks places though does get the bus and the train. Mr Theroux is great at gently probing the sure minded working class English and various strange characters he meets in these coastal towns, and encouraging them to share their opinions and prejudices. The comedy is pretty fantastic at some points.

One theme of the book is the decline of Britain which is pretty fair. However at one point further on in the book I thought Mr Theroux was overly harsh in his judgement of English organisations. He says the English are great as individuals but as a group they can’t run things basically. In page 218:

“Writing my diary that night I generalized on this, concluding that ever large hotel at which I had stayed at in England was run down or badly managed, overpriced, understaffed and dirty, the staff overworked and slow; and all the smaller places were preferable, the smallest always the best. The English were great craftsmen but poor mass producers of goods. They were brilliant at running corner shops, but were failures when they tried their hands at supermarkets. Perhaps this had something to do with their sense of anonymity? Person to person I had found them truthful and efficient and humane. But anonymity made them lazy, dishonest and aggressive. Hidden in his car the Englishman was often impatient to the point of being murderous; over the phone they were unhelpful and frequently rude. They were not timid, but shy; shyness made them tolerant, but it also gave them a grudge against foreigners, whom they regarded as boomers and show-offs. It was hard to distinguish hotels in England from prisons or hospitals. Most of them were run with the same indifference or cruelty and are equally uncomfortable. The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked working for others and they seemed to resent taking orders. On the whole, directors were treated absurdly well, and workers badly, and most industries were weakened by class suspicion and false economies and cynicism. But the same qualities that made English people seem stubborn and secretive made them, face to face, reliable and true to their word. I thought: The English do small things well and big things badly.”

Of course I am British myself and although I distance myself from those of the tabloid reading lower classes many of the reflections of Mr Theroux could just as easily apply to me.

As I was getting in the queue for my Wizz air flight back to Glasgow from Budapest there was an Eastern European who very obviously tried to skip the queue. I got really annoyed but didn’t say anything, however ultimately he decided to skip the guy behind me who seemed to let him in (but I still felt like shouting at the pair of them, the guy behind for not respecting the people behind him). The same happened to me at the Louvre in Paris in January however a outspoken German lady (part of a couple) said what I was too scared or reluctant to say “the queue starts over there pal!!”

Mr Theroux reflects that our shyness and our tolerance ultimately breeds xenophobia.

Another interesting theme of the book is the trend towards holidaying abroad by the middle and upper classes of Britain (which was bang on point in my case of holidaying in Budapest). The seaside towns like Blackpool or places like Butlins have totally fallen out of fashion and the people there are struggling. I know this trend is certainly bang on point in terms of my family. Cheap flights with airlines such as Ryanair make it cheaper to spend your time off in an exotic location (mainland Europe) with varied and better food and interesting sights and people.

Ultimately this idea depresses me a little bit because these towns seem to turn more Right Wing and extreme the more they decline. It feels like there is more of a divide these days in terms of those who holiday abroad and those who can’t afford to, but I am only 32 years old, so maybe I don’t know what I am talking about.

Finally you might be wondering what the writer has to say about Scotland. I found his writing was a bit rushed at that point, or I got a bit bored at that point actually. Mr Theroux made it to Glasgow then Oban then Fort William and then Aberdeen (but I stopped reading at that point). Mr Theroux reflects that many Scottish towns are very isolated such as those on the islands near Oban, or on the West Coast. I totally agree with this. I visited Ullapool yesterday and couldn’t imagine a more difficult and lonely place to live, especially as a young person or for a person such as myself without a car. 

Mr Theroux has a lot more to say that I have left out of this blog post such as his time in Belfast and in Wales and in Liverpool but I will end the blog post here. Anyway in summary I would give this paperback a very high mark out of ten in terms of a travel book. Very witty, bang on point with its critique of British working class beliefs and social norms, bang on point in terms of its portrayal of British seaside town decline.