The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 19,372 ratings

Price: 19.69

Last update: 01-19-2025


About this item

A loving and hilarious—if occasionally spiky—valentine to Bill Bryson’s adopted country, Great Britain. Prepare for total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter.

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a true classic and one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed—and what hasn’t.

Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places few travelers ever get to at all, Bryson rediscovers the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly singular country that he both celebrates and, when called for, twits. With his matchless instinct for the funniest and quirkiest and his unerring eye for the idiotic, the bewildering, the appealing, and the ridiculous, he offers acute and perceptive insights into all that is best and worst about Britain today.

Nothing is more entertaining than Bill Bryson on the road—and on a tear. The Road to Little Dribbling reaffirms his stature as a master of the travel narrative—and a really, really funny guy.


Top reviews from the United States

  • cag2012
    5.0 out of 5 stars Really don't understand the negative reviews
    Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2016
    I had always compared Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island," which utterly delighted me and was one of the most hilarious and captivating books I've ever read, to Paul Thereoux's "The Kingdom by the Sea," which makes Britain out to be the most unfortunate and horrible place on the entire planet.

    Into my comparison comes the new "The Road to Little Dribbling." Or, perhaps, I should not say new. Although I had it set for pre-order on my Kindle for some time and read it pretty much immediately after it downloaded, it has, apparently, been out for some months in other formats, because Bryson has antiquated publishers. I was one of the people who clicked on (perhaps multiple times) the tell the publisher you want to read this on Kindle link for "Notes." So wake up, publishers -- perhaps you would have had more serious fans reviewing the book sooner if you had released it at the same time for ebooks as you did for dead tree books.

    Anyway. As I read this, I became aware in a way that I had not while reading "Notes," that it is possible that the Thereoux of his time and the Bryson of "Little Dribbling" were equally crotchety old men, both finding reasons to be irritated by incompetent and/or stupid people they met along their travels. But even if they were, Thereoux is either one of the most humorless writers of all time, or imbued with such a dry sarcasm that I -- who feel myself to have a pretty high sarcasm meter -- picked up on absolutely none of it. Also, while Bryson seems to have met with an equal mix of incompetent/stupid people, he also met with a reasonable range of coherent/interesting/clever ones, in the course of "Little Dribbling."

    Also, any increased crochetiness was basically forgiven because this is, hands-down, the book I have laughed out loud reading more than any other, as I tore through it in the course of two days. I travel to Britain every year, so perhaps the jokes and the subtle humor are closer to home for me, but they were absolutely spot-on, and absolutely hilarious.

    I love reading when Bryson writes about Britain because I think he feels the same way I do about the place -- that it is filled with idiosyncratic but lovely people, and that it has so much amazingly beautiful landscape that needs to be preserved. It is a place you love wholeheartedly, while simultaneously understanding that it is, in many ways, ridiculous.

    I gather some people were unhappy about the amount of time spent on Scotland and Wales. Don't get me wrong, Bryson could probably do a whole book on Scotland or Wales and I would find it endlessly amusing, BUT, what he generally did was stick to a fair amount of well-known tourist routes and locales, which does differ from "Notes." Frankly, because I had just been to a lot of these places, I found it more interesting. I didn't 100% agree with him all of the time, but I appreciated his perspective.

    And the fundamental theme of his book, and what I have felt is the fundamental theme of Britain, is that there is just too damn much to see in any one visit, or any one route. So much has happened there, and there are so many preserved sites, and so many museums, that I go there every year for 2.5 weeks, and still have not seen a fraction of what I want to see. So from personal experience, I can understand if he started in the south and encountered most of a book's worth of material before hitting Yorkshire.

    I will say that the title, while amusing and wholly British, had no context within the actual book, so far as I remember. I got to the acknowledgements and there was some note about it, and I was like, "wait, that was never actually mentioned in the text." However, this was so amusing, and I was so eager to see Bryson's writing about Britain again, that I probably would have pre-ordered it even if the title was "Bugger Bognor Regis."
  • James F. Smith
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good, But Not Bryson's Best
    Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2017
    I enjoy all of Bill Bryson's books, and this one is no exception. But it's not one of his best.

    As the author himself admits when describing the genesis of the book in his editor's office, there is a danger it could become a re-hash of his earlier book on Britain, "Notes from a Small Island." Having noted this obvious pitfall, he proceeds to tumble squarely into it. "Little Dribbling" will seem awfully familiar to those who have read the earlier work.

    As with "Notes," most of the text consists of Bryson describing the landscapes and townscapes he encounters on solitary walks, mixed in with snippets of local history, culture, and current events, and with informal social commentary. It is an approach that has worked for him in the past, and he is a master of it: his descriptions are gorgeous, his background material is well-researched, and his commentary is humorous and thought-provoking. The problem here (as with "Notes") is that there is sometimes quite a bit of similarity in the local scenery, people, and history from one place to the next, so at times it starts to run together. Some of the most memorable passages involve Bryson's encounters with locals and fellow travelers, and I would have liked more this.

    One aspect in which this book works less well for me than "Notes" and other Bryson books is the narrative voice. I've always found Bryson's curmudgeonly-but-cheerful persona hugely entertaining. It often brings a smile and even a chuckle as I read. It's still here in this book, but at points it seems to shade into something a little nastier, something almost misanthropic. Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be more gratuitous swearing and summary dismissal of interlocutors as stupid (or worse) than I remember in past works.

    In the end, though, anything by Bill Bryson has enough great moments to make it worth the price of admission. On the whole, I would recommend this book, but I hope he tries something a little more original, and maybe less snippy, the next time out.
  • Beverly A. Sykes
    5.0 out of 5 stars Makes me want to return to England
    Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2016
    Years ago, My husband and I were in Cambridge, England and I saw a display in a book store window. The book was Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island," a book he wrote driving around England, where he and his family had lived for many years, for one last look before returning to the US. Walt and I were driving around England and Bryson's book became our most delightful tour guide, as he visited many of the spots where we visited. Bryson is the master of the little known fact about things you never realized. In this new book, he is taking another tour of England to see how it compares with his first book. As in "Notes," this one is chock full of information you didn't realized you wanted to know and things about people you never heard of before. Like Thomas Pritchard, who designed the first iron bridge in the world, in Shropshire. Pritchard had never done anything in cast iron, because nobody had before, yet he never got to see it because he died before it was finished.

    I also leaned about Building B30 at Sellafield, which is "the most hazardous building in Europe." It and the building next door are filled with slowly decaying fuel rods and contaminated hunks of metal and machinery.

    But mostly, this book is filled with tales of marvelous vistas, beautiful, walks, quiet beaches, quirky locations, eccentric people, and quaint little towns you have probably never heard of but suddenly desperately want to visit. And who knew that more people are killed in England by cows than by bulls..?

    This book celebrates the best...and the worst of Bryson's adopted country. It's a great read.

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