I was recently* in the Victorian regional town of Shepparton** where I stayed in the cheapest and shittiest motel money could buy (I won’t say which because that would be rude). I only spent a night there, but for the time I was in the room, with its ancient fittings, thin carpet and rock-hard pillows, I kept thinking back to this book, and especially that scene where a nude, drunk woman barges into Paul Theroux’s room, looking to nuzzle up with him while he slept. That didn’t happen to me. But, for a moment, I understood what Theroux must have experienced as he toured the British coastline.

In 1982, on the eve of the Falklands War (an event that understandably permeates the narrative), Louis and Marcel’s Dad, having seen bugger all of the country after spending eleven years in the UK, decides to journey clockwise, starting from Margate, around the coast. What follows is a snapshot in time: an insightful and frequently funny record of Britain and its diverse communities that hug the shore.

Travel books are not my thing. So, I can’t judge where this sits alongside a Bill Bryson or a Jan Morris (the latter of whom Theroux visits in what’s a lovely scene, but also very much of its time—like an excited puppy, Theroux reminds us on several occasions of Morris’s gender transition). Auberon Waugh, for example, really did not like this book, knocking Theroux for visiting the “loneliest and nastiest corners” of the country. Waugh says, “To base a judgment of the British people on chance encounters with strangers while one stays, as Mr. Theroux did, in cheap hotels and lodging houses is no more useful than to base a judgment of British literature on graffiti in public lavatories and railway stations.”

Unlike Waugh, I never felt that Theroux was trying to represent the country through its coastline. Instead, he’s shining a light on a part of Britain forgotten by those who live in London. He does play up the eccentricities, the racism, and the peccadilloes of the people he meets. And he doesn’t hold back when he thinks a motel or a town is a bit shit. But there’s also a curiosity and sense of wonder in the questions he asks, even if he’s not expecting a meaningful answer. There are also several delightful moments. His aforementioned visit to Jan Morris. The sad and mysterious fate of a man he met on a previous sojourn on the Orient Express. His stay in Cornwall.

I liked this book. Maybe not enough to read more Theroux, but happy to be persuaded otherwise.

*It won’t be so recent by the time I press publish on this.

**For work if you must know.