Next second, he had broken from their hands, and was running up another garden path like a terrified rabbit. I started this as an audiobook but that just didn't work; I wanted to check maps to follow all the places author was visiting. He can't bear the thought of being given to Cousin Elsie, who'd make such as fuss - so he goes away, where nobody knows him . The grandfather said, "Aah used to reckon they were mad, leaving the door unlocked when they weren't here, and that notice on the table.

It seemed very similar to Westall's "Blitzcat" because both have protagonists who go traveling around England meeting various strangers along the way. Then at the end he finds out that they're not and they put him down for running away because he was in shock and being safe and healthy while they were in the hospital in an air raid.

Theroux, who was born in America, had good fish-out-of-water stories about living and traveling in England, but for some reason it was a challenge for me to finish this book. But the moment he turned his steps towards home, the truth came back to him; the burning pile of bricks. Some of his other awards include The Carnegie Medal in 1982 for The Scarecrows, the Smarties Prize in 1989 for Blitzcat, and the Guardian Award in 1991 for The Kingdom by the Sea. The British seemed to me to be people forever standing on a crumbling coast and scanning the horizon.

And as he encounters new characters, and forges relationships with them, their time together is temporary. Paul Theroux undertook his journey round the coast of the United Kingdom exactly 25 years ago, in 1982. This, certainly, was one of the most wonderful gifts of my life, and remains a favorite of a genre to which I am now addicted.We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic.

This book provokes a lot of negative reactions: I can see why, though as a non-native I don't share the outrage.The title of the book is taken from the opening lines of the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe: It was many and many a year ago/ In a kingdom by the sea,/ That a maiden there lived whom you may know/ By the name of Annabel Lee. I really felt for Harry as the end of the book I feel should’ve been extremely happy… he finds his family after believing they’ve all been killed. Tom" by Michelle Magorian, another WW II novel for young readers, I could give this one only 4 stars. Theroux's departures from resorts (to Liverpool, Belfast, Ulster) are among the most interesting parts of the book. The Mermaid’s “seduction” works in a different way from Merman’s (which is overtly sexual), but Harry does lift her up, eat her food, sleep in her bed wearing her son’s clothes.

Shyness made them tolerant, but it also gave them a grudge against foreigners, whom they regarded as boomers and show-offs. And on the other side, these shabby angry bossy people… full of whining self-pity for what *they* had suffered. The only time he seems to like what he sees is when is in the far-north of Great Britain, on the North Sea in Scotland. The English aristocracy, according to Theroux, had nearly always composed of flatterers, cutthroats, boyfriends, political pirates, and people of very conceited ambition.

First, this means he avoids major British cities, including London, Newcastle, Manchester, Oxbridge, etc.