I know it’s not ITM but there’s a lot about English tradition and music in this.
Book recommendation - In Search Of Albion by Colin Irwin.
If you really want to understand why no-one will ever understand the English and find out what we’re like when we’re not wasting our time trying to conquer other people then read this book. Alternatively, if you just fancy a good laugh then read this book.
You can find out about loads of customs preserved since time immoral (or last week), learn about the joys (or lack thereof) of caravanning in Cornwall, discover English music (including the bits the Irish keep trying to pinch off us), or just find further proof that our yokels are undoubtedly the daftest on Earth.
Every Englishman should have this as required reading and Johnny Foreigner (colonials included) will find new ‘must see’ sights to see (if they’re ever brave enough to venture here after reading this).
BTW for ITM fans he has another book called In Search Of The Craic of which I’ve just got a copy. I can hardly wait.
I have ordered both from Amazon. I like recommendations like this. If I don’t like the books, I know who made the recommendation (and where they live).
I got both on the recommendation of this thread and would have to say they are both pretty damned useless travel guides unless you are already well informed about all the people and places in the books. Both or them are about the travels of a music journalist as he wanders about recalling the names of various obscure (to me) musicians and performers and their old haunts. There is one really funny story about a horse race at the beginning of the Irish book, but it rapidly goes downhill after that to join the English book.
Yep, the horse race story was very good, but didn’t care for the rest of it. The whole Englishman in Ireland ‘genre’ is pretty bad, but at least he wasn’t traveling with a refrigerator or some other nonsense.
Read “Last Nights Fun” instead of “ISO the Craic”, so much better.
Padre, shame on you, a learnéd man like you should know that the english sense of humour is no laughing matter!
I seen that guy being interviewed during his hibernian kitchen installment adventure; he was convinced that he was hilarious, the Irish morning TV presenter/interviewer (no stranger to inane banality) was having a hard time convincing her audience that she didn’t think that this ‘wacky’ goof-ball wasn’t a deeply misguided infantile knob.
The Irwin stuff generally reminds me of self obsessed and boring revival ‘folkies’ that I sometimes get cornered by. ‘Last Night’s Fun’ is one I’d definitely have on my coffee table; if I had a coffee table and was lame enough to leave designer ID books on it that is.
