The Istoriaphile’s Corner

I was raised to be an Anglophile.  As a child, my mother spent two memorable years in England, while her father was stationed there, and the experience affected the rest of her life and the education of her daughters.  We were probably the first family in our small Kansas town to make Masterpiece Theatre “must watch” TV.  My sister and I learned the ranks of aristocracy by memorizing the mnemonic “Do Men Ever Visit Boston”(Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, Baron) and how to love a good cup of hot tea, even if it was Lipton. Even if she disagreed with some of Parliament’s policies and decisions, England remained Mother’s spiritual “home-away-from-home,” a dampish Shangri-La. That’s why I’m sorry she never found Bill Bryson’s book, Notes from a Small Island; she would have enjoyed it so much.  Like Peter Mayle’s travelogue of the English expatriate living in France, Bryson gives an educated outsider’s view of life in a foreign country. In this case, it’s the perspective of an American living in England. Bryson is one of those impetuous, imaginative Americans grown-ups admire until their children try to follow his example.  He was backpacking around Europe, on a summer break from college, when…