As a non-British person (although I’m from a former British colony), I must admit to not knowing much about Middle England, or even having much of an impression what it was. So it was pretty surprising to realise that I’ve visited, and even lived in, some of the places mentioned in Adventures on the High Teas.
Like the subtitle “In Search of Middle England” says, this book is a travelogue about Middle England. However, rather than moving towards a goal, the book looks at Middle England from the following aspects:
- The literal centre of England, Meriden, Warwickshire
- Spa Towns
- The seedier side of British society – which started at Royal Tunbridge Wells
- English Food
- Music
- Jane Austen (this was about Bath, naturally)
- The British sense of humour
- Railroads
- Murder mysteries
- Margaret Thatcher
Normally, I’d mention the places that the author visits, but one thing about this book is that – I’m actually not very sure all the places that the author went to. There were some that were obvious, like Meriden, and some places, like Bath, were just too noticeable, but there were times where I would read for pages without actually figuring out where the author went. This was because the author has the tendency to go on really long tangents, which ends up blurring the sense of place. To compare this to another travelogue, In the Land of Giants was another book that had a lot of information not directly related to the place (it was all in the past, literally) but I was never confused about what was going on or where the author was heading.
But then again, I read some other reviews which loved the author’s style, so perhaps it’s my non-Britishness that made it hard for me to follow along with the book. After all, some of the digressions were entertaining and I particularly enjoyed the passage about the Full English Breakfast (it made me hungry, so clearly it was good writing).
I also managed to get other takeaways from the book, such as a reminder to read Robert Aickman – I have a book of his on my TBR, so I’ll have to move that up – and the fact that J.R.R. Tolkien lived in Birmingham. Having lived in Edgbaston for a year when I was very young, I felt thrilled to see this slight connection.
To be honest, I’m not sure if I can recommend this. I really liked the premise and I thought some of his digressions were pretty interesting, but I was also confused for a large part of the book. It may have been because there was no introduction to provide a sense of structure of how the author was going to explore Middle England, or it could be that I am really not the target audience, but this wasn’t the easiest read.