Land of Hope and Glory

While I am a big fan of Frank Clune books, I am finding that his memoir books and his history / biographical books are significantly stronger than his pure travel books. This one read like it has been commissioned by some sort of travel agency drumming up interest in Britain from Australians - but even then I am not sure it would have the right effect.

I found this almost all incredibly dull. The parts that stood out as more interesting, as expected were Clune's face to face interviews with people, and his day to day interactions with people. In a geographical assessment the Irish section (Republic) was more interesting, but perhaps because I was more familiar with the places.

Where I think the dullness is its worst is where Clune attempts to cover everything in too much depth. Every town he visits, every road he travels, every shop he enters, every person he meets, he has a history for. Sometimes they are interesting, sometimes they are not. Sometimes he tries to summarise a total history in a few paragraphs, which needed a dozen pages to even scratch the surface. For my mind if he picked the best gems and concentrated on them and edited the rest out it would be much more readable.

To his credit he visits much Britain and Ireland, although he doesn't cross into Wales, Northern Ireland or the south-west / west Midlands. He spent around 3 months zigzagging his way around Britain and Scotland.

In some way (unacknowledged, unless I missed it (probable)), his journey must have been sponsored by ICI (the industrial company), as he not only visits many ICI factories and undertakes tours of their manufacturing, but also explains and promotes their products, and we are provided with a full history of the forming of ICI from the amalgamation of four large companies in 1926.

I would struggle to recommend this as general reading. If you wanted a very brief overview of a lot of British history, this might be a book worth considering.

2.5 stars, rounded down.