Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

JOHN LE CARRE

Quite superb…..a masterpiece

WILLIAM BOYD

Tim Butcher's extraordinary, audacious journey through the Congo is worthy of the great 19th century explorers. Completely enthralling but also a thoughtful and sobering portrait of modern Africa

ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

A remarkable, fascinating book by a courageous and perceptive writer. One of the most exciting books to emerge from Africa in recent years.

THE SUNDAY TIMES

Tim Butcher's book is the latest in a long line, running through Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene, VS Nai-paul… his account of a hair-rising trip from east to west, against all advice, by motorbike and then river boat, is gripping and harshly informative…

MAX HASTINGS

Blood River represents a remarkable marriage of travelogue and history, which deserves to make Tim Butcher a star for his prose, as well as his courage.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

From his adventure he has plundered a wealth of terrific stories, and survived to recite a rosary of unstinting horror.

FERGAL KEANE

This is a terrific book, an adventure story about a journey of great bravery in one of the world's most dangerous places. It keeps the heart beating and the attention fixed from beginning to end.

HATCHARDS

…unputdownable…

GILES FODEN

An intrepid adventure... Tim Butcher has followed in the footsteps of Stanley and Conrad. It takes a lot of guts to yomp through the Congo and he obviously has plenty of those. But it is the wit and passion of the writing which keeps you engrossed.

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

..stirring and thought-provoking.

AESTHETICA MAGAZINE

….a remarkable travelogue of exquisite proportions…. highly emotive, historical and personal…Butcher's elegant style demands the reader's attention…….Blood River is nothing short of a modern-day masterpiece.

WANDERLUST

What makes Blood River such a compelling read is the fact that the journey becomes an exercise in mental terror, the author skilfully conveying the exhaustion of six weeks on tenterhooks, wondering what might happen just around the next bend.

THOMAS PAKENHAM

Tim Butcher deserves a medal for this crazy feat. I marvel at his courage and his empathy with the unfortunate Congolese...

ESQUIRE

…gripping…

TRAVEL AFRICA

The past meets present in this enthralling travelogue through the depths of the Congo.

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

Fascinating and insightful, 24 Sep 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, this has happened successfully.
If you want to look inside the Congo (Africa?), and try to understand its issues this is 'must read'. But be prepared to wrestle with these issues, which the author so brilliantly highlights, for a long time afterwards.


over-hyped, 23 Sep 2008
this book has a very good intro and that must be what prompted the likes of le carre and william boyd to big it up

But butcher comes across as naive and a whiner, and the book quickly gets boring and repetitive.

to be honest it's hard to believe this guy is a war correspondent, he gets scared very easily while his analysis of Congolese history is oversimplistic and his UN apologism frankly nauseating

one point for trying

Middle of the Road Travel Book, 17 Sep 2008
Just finished reading `Blood River`. Not bad but not as good/insightful as Dark Star Safari. I`m not sure Stanley would have considered Mr Butcher a true adventure traveller but in a country that is a lot more dangerous and corrupt now than it was back in the 1870`s you could forgive Mr Butcher for taking advantage of some of the more luxurious modes of tranport that he did for his Congo journey. The book Gives a slight insight into the extremely difficult circumstances in which people in the Congo have to live, but did not really delve into the heart of many of the issues. One might surmise that Mr Butcher was rather more interested in fulfilling a dream (and self preservation/`dollar preservation` during said fulfillment!) than shedding any meaningful light on this giant of an African country. Nevertheless a worth while read for anyone interested in modern African travel.

Stanley never rode in helicopters!, 13 Sep 2008
Butcher is a vainglorious charlatan. Look at his compressed, hand-drawn maps, and how he tries to distract your notice away from his 600km-long helicopter ride! (p.291) Overland adventurer, my arse. Did Stanley ride 1000km in a UN patrol boat?

And much like his predecessor Stanley, he misuses Africans to achieve his own ends: one of his pirogue paddlers collapses from fever and malnourishment because Butcher hasn't paid them anything up front and has demanded that they paddle double-quick.

Get this from a library, but don't buy it.

Fascinating tale of a country destroyed by greed, 12 Sep 2008
Loved the book - Devestating to read of how the Congo has been destroyed. I can only hope that the future leaders will learn from past mistakes.

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

Fascinating and insightful, 24 Sep 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, this has happened successfully.
If you want to look inside the Congo (Africa?), and try to understand its issues this is 'must read'. But be prepared to wrestle with these issues, which the author so brilliantly highlights, for a long time afterwards.


over-hyped, 23 Sep 2008
this book has a very good intro and that must be what prompted the likes of le carre and william boyd to big it up

But butcher comes across as naive and a whiner, and the book quickly gets boring and repetitive.

to be honest it's hard to believe this guy is a war correspondent, he gets scared very easily while his analysis of Congolese history is oversimplistic and his UN apologism frankly nauseating

one point for trying

Middle of the Road Travel Book, 17 Sep 2008
Just finished reading `Blood River`. Not bad but not as good/insightful as Dark Star Safari. I`m not sure Stanley would have considered Mr Butcher a true adventure traveller but in a country that is a lot more dangerous and corrupt now than it was back in the 1870`s you could forgive Mr Butcher for taking advantage of some of the more luxurious modes of tranport that he did for his Congo journey. The book Gives a slight insight into the extremely difficult circumstances in which people in the Congo have to live, but did not really delve into the heart of many of the issues. One might surmise that Mr Butcher was rather more interested in fulfilling a dream (and self preservation/`dollar preservation` during said fulfillment!) than shedding any meaningful light on this giant of an African country. Nevertheless a worth while read for anyone interested in modern African travel.

Stanley never rode in helicopters!, 13 Sep 2008
Butcher is a vainglorious charlatan. Look at his compressed, hand-drawn maps, and how he tries to distract your notice away from his 600km-long helicopter ride! (p.291) Overland adventurer, my arse. Did Stanley ride 1000km in a UN patrol boat?

And much like his predecessor Stanley, he misuses Africans to achieve his own ends: one of his pirogue paddlers collapses from fever and malnourishment because Butcher hasn't paid them anything up front and has demanded that they paddle double-quick.

Get this from a library, but don't buy it.

Fascinating tale of a country destroyed by greed, 12 Sep 2008
Loved the book - Devestating to read of how the Congo has been destroyed. I can only hope that the future leaders will learn from past mistakes.

Bruce rocks!, 10 Oct 2008
In his inimitable style Bruce is bringing attention to one of the biggest scandals in the modern world, no less than the destruction of the most important habitat on our planet. It's something our generation will go down in history for and nobody is doing anything to stop it. More power to Bruce for showing how even some of the people destroying the forest are just trying to survive. We won't begin to tackle this issue until we appreciate that there are no easy answers (if you want a good summary of why the Amazon and other environments are so precious I'm a big fan of Bruce's other book Serious Survival as well).

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

Fascinating and insightful, 24 Sep 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, this has happened successfully.
If you want to look inside the Congo (Africa?), and try to understand its issues this is 'must read'. But be prepared to wrestle with these issues, which the author so brilliantly highlights, for a long time afterwards.


over-hyped, 23 Sep 2008
this book has a very good intro and that must be what prompted the likes of le carre and william boyd to big it up

But butcher comes across as naive and a whiner, and the book quickly gets boring and repetitive.

to be honest it's hard to believe this guy is a war correspondent, he gets scared very easily while his analysis of Congolese history is oversimplistic and his UN apologism frankly nauseating

one point for trying

Middle of the Road Travel Book, 17 Sep 2008
Just finished reading `Blood River`. Not bad but not as good/insightful as Dark Star Safari. I`m not sure Stanley would have considered Mr Butcher a true adventure traveller but in a country that is a lot more dangerous and corrupt now than it was back in the 1870`s you could forgive Mr Butcher for taking advantage of some of the more luxurious modes of tranport that he did for his Congo journey. The book Gives a slight insight into the extremely difficult circumstances in which people in the Congo have to live, but did not really delve into the heart of many of the issues. One might surmise that Mr Butcher was rather more interested in fulfilling a dream (and self preservation/`dollar preservation` during said fulfillment!) than shedding any meaningful light on this giant of an African country. Nevertheless a worth while read for anyone interested in modern African travel.

Stanley never rode in helicopters!, 13 Sep 2008
Butcher is a vainglorious charlatan. Look at his compressed, hand-drawn maps, and how he tries to distract your notice away from his 600km-long helicopter ride! (p.291) Overland adventurer, my arse. Did Stanley ride 1000km in a UN patrol boat?

And much like his predecessor Stanley, he misuses Africans to achieve his own ends: one of his pirogue paddlers collapses from fever and malnourishment because Butcher hasn't paid them anything up front and has demanded that they paddle double-quick.

Get this from a library, but don't buy it.

Fascinating tale of a country destroyed by greed, 12 Sep 2008
Loved the book - Devestating to read of how the Congo has been destroyed. I can only hope that the future leaders will learn from past mistakes.

Bruce rocks!, 10 Oct 2008
In his inimitable style Bruce is bringing attention to one of the biggest scandals in the modern world, no less than the destruction of the most important habitat on our planet. It's something our generation will go down in history for and nobody is doing anything to stop it. More power to Bruce for showing how even some of the people destroying the forest are just trying to survive. We won't begin to tackle this issue until we appreciate that there are no easy answers (if you want a good summary of why the Amazon and other environments are so precious I'm a big fan of Bruce's other book Serious Survival as well).

Peasant France, 09 Oct 2008
This is a superbly written history-cum-travelogue. Robb is known for his books on French writers (Balzac, Hugo and Rimbaud) but here he ventures into peasant France, riding on his bicycle to make the time for the small details of life in rural France. He writes extremely well about landscape, an the book throughout is enjoyable to read. Drawing on travelogues of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Robb accentuates the backwardness of peasant France - mainly for effect, it seems. I found this increasingly annoying. It is an imbalance in the book. The French peasants come across as a nation of troglodytes. The second half of the book is more conventional history on the theme of nation-building in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps better covered in Eugene Weber's masterpiece, Peasants into Frenchman. Overall, a good book indeed, but not without its weaknesses.

Unification and what was lost along the way, 07 Oct 2008
Visiting relatives in France, I often drive down the A26 autoroute over the plain of Champagne: mile after mile of chalk plateau, with never a village or house in sight. I've often wondered how this landscape looked before motor transport, when getting from your house to work the fields involved horse-power or your own feet: was the settlement pattern denser, with hamlets and villages now swept away by the depopulation following agribusiness, or has it always been this empty? Graham Robb answered this for me in this splendid study of the making of modern France: it always was this empty, to the extent that in early cartographic surveys of the country the attempt to find landmarks on this featureless plain led even to particularly conspicuous trees finding their way onto national maps.

Robb is both a historian and expert on France, and someone who has cycled extensively in the country, and he brings to his historical work a grounding in the sheer physicality of the land that I don't remember encountering in a comparable historical work before: he is intensely aware of the distances, the physical effort involved in traversing them, and the network of minor roads and tracks that form a network below the sightline of the motorway driver. He is equally good on the sights, sounds and smells of the French landscape. This appreciation of the physical landscape informs his discussion of how, at the start of the early modern period, much of France was a foreign country to its rulers and the citizens of its capital: remote, difficult to reach, self-sufficient, perhaps only recently added to the kingdom, living according to customs and rituals remote from Parisian practices, and speaking at best a patois of French that the cultivated metropolitan found incomprehensible (and in many cases a completely different language: Occitan, Flemish, German, Basque).

Melding this vast and remote landscape into a unified nation-state involved, Robb indicates, vast acts of state-enforced forgetting, with regional differences ironed out by a centralising state (having seen my nieces go through the rigid centralised French school curriculum, I won't argue with that). Vast riches of local peculiarities, many vanished, are brought together by Robb in this volume: be prepared to bore anyone you live with by reading out a snippet every other page. (Cafés in Paris, for example, were - and still are - disproportionately run by immigrants from the Auvergne. Want to know why? - read the book.) It's a lively read, a chance to wallow in the particularities of the French landscape, a study that raises all sorts of questions about the nation-state, its relationship to "minorities" and the extent to which it has to enforce homogeneity; my only complaint was that it was over too soon.

Fascinating insight into the lost tribes of France, 05 Oct 2008
A Francophile with a penchant for learning about France while taking cycling holidays there, Robb has written a brilliant evocation of a lost world, when most inhabitants of France from outside the Paris region did not speak French and did not think of themselves as being French, and then an equally fascinating story of how the railway and the bicycle allowed the French state to impose "Frenchness" on the country. The book draws on evidence mostly from pre-revolutionary France, but with enough from the nineteenth century to support the thesis that it was late nineteenth century technology that made the difference. The storied are fascinating - I was particularly amused to read of a (mildish) torture called "putting on pressure" that Breton women visited on men that they caught alone, and of the fact that in creating the shrine at Lourdes that village put another local place of pilgrimage out of business. You also discover that the original Tour de France was a series of circuits by artisan journeymen and that France had its own caste of "untouchables", the cagots.

If I think that there is any deficiency it is that there is no sense of connection between these simple, sometime primitive, often poor people and any kind of larger society. Most of these people would have had landlords, and not all would have been absentee ones. Even if they did not think of themselves as French, they would have known, and have had mutual bonds of obligation to, people who did. France, after all, produced enormous armies of conscripts throughout the revolutionary wars, and France was generally regarded as the richest country in continental Europe.

As an Brit reading this book one is bound to wonder whether the same could have been said of the British population at the same time, or whether Britain changed earlier, perhaps, because it is smaller and because enclosure changed the nature of agricultural society more even than industrialisation. Perhaps Mr Robb ought to start taking cycle touring holidays in Britain?


Fascinating. Eclectic. Readable., 07 Aug 2008
This is one of the most enjoyable books i have read in recent years, written in a wonderful accessible style, it contains marvellous detail, and unusual facts about all aspects of France. This is really a first class book, and a great summer read.

Discover the real France, 30 Jul 2008
Graham Robb is a serious scholar. He has written books on Balzac, Rimbaud, Victor Hugo and Baudelaire. This list also suggests another academic and personal passion - France. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University after his degree in modern languages at Oxford, and has since excelled as a writer. This is a rare fusion of scholarly research and revelatory fact, written in an accessible but highly literate and engaging style.

The book is quite difficult to pigeonhole. It is at times a travel book, based on Robb's own personal experience of cycling around France and getting a feel for the immensity of what the pre-industrial nation would have been. It is also an anthropological study of the French, and the development of the nation through history. In fact the central thesis, that the idea of a French nation is a purely modern conceit, occupies much of the book. Robb then sets out to describe what the modern republic replaced. The migrations of peoples, the intricate network of towns, villages and regions, the Babel tongued array of languages and dialects, the cast of untouchables and the tenuous attachment to Paris and royal control.

It is a biography of the French people, an erudite, if potted, ramble through folklore, local history, linguistics and sociology. Perhaps most startling is that the book manages to amaze on every page with facts that even those conversant with French history would be intrigued with. This is a history of the ordinary people, of the rhythms and nature of everyday life. It is an account of a nation held together by the loosest of binds, where the Paris elite could barely travel and expect to be understood outside the Ile de France.

This is at the heart of the book. Robb considers that the bulk of history written on France starts from the central conceit that Paris, king and court were somehow representative or integral to the rest of France. He demonstrates this falsehood with startling stories, from the existence and experience of an outcast group, the Cagot to the original `tour de France', conducted on foot by the apprentice bands of craftsmen and covering the vast internal migrations of workers, the daily grind and difficulty of peasant life, and the experience of those `explorers' who ventured into this misunderstood hinterland, are revealed in a delicious and gripping text.

If I was to be glib I could say this was a Bill Bryson for the literary set, but this would diminish both Robb and Bryson's work. It is a unique and fascinating ramble through French history, with a strong central argument that modern France, and with it the modern French, are a singularly modern creation. This was built over the rich and intricate patchwork of local and regional identities, which, Robb manages to argue with an erudite conviction, were far more interesting and noteworthy entities.

Robb won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography with Victor Hugo and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. I expect this book to win even greater praise. This was easily my non-fiction book recommendation of the year for 2007, and is a book I will return to. It was revelatory, lucid and vivid. Anyone with an interest in France, or in history, will be well served by getting this book as soon as possible.

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

Fascinating and insightful, 24 Sep 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, this has happened successfully.
If you want to look inside the Congo (Africa?), and try to understand its issues this is 'must read'. But be prepared to wrestle with these issues, which the author so brilliantly highlights, for a long time afterwards.


over-hyped, 23 Sep 2008
this book has a very good intro and that must be what prompted the likes of le carre and william boyd to big it up

But butcher comes across as naive and a whiner, and the book quickly gets boring and repetitive.

to be honest it's hard to believe this guy is a war correspondent, he gets scared very easily while his analysis of Congolese history is oversimplistic and his UN apologism frankly nauseating

one point for trying

Middle of the Road Travel Book, 17 Sep 2008
Just finished reading `Blood River`. Not bad but not as good/insightful as Dark Star Safari. I`m not sure Stanley would have considered Mr Butcher a true adventure traveller but in a country that is a lot more dangerous and corrupt now than it was back in the 1870`s you could forgive Mr Butcher for taking advantage of some of the more luxurious modes of tranport that he did for his Congo journey. The book Gives a slight insight into the extremely difficult circumstances in which people in the Congo have to live, but did not really delve into the heart of many of the issues. One might surmise that Mr Butcher was rather more interested in fulfilling a dream (and self preservation/`dollar preservation` during said fulfillment!) than shedding any meaningful light on this giant of an African country. Nevertheless a worth while read for anyone interested in modern African travel.

Stanley never rode in helicopters!, 13 Sep 2008
Butcher is a vainglorious charlatan. Look at his compressed, hand-drawn maps, and how he tries to distract your notice away from his 600km-long helicopter ride! (p.291) Overland adventurer, my arse. Did Stanley ride 1000km in a UN patrol boat?

And much like his predecessor Stanley, he misuses Africans to achieve his own ends: one of his pirogue paddlers collapses from fever and malnourishment because Butcher hasn't paid them anything up front and has demanded that they paddle double-quick.

Get this from a library, but don't buy it.

Fascinating tale of a country destroyed by greed, 12 Sep 2008
Loved the book - Devestating to read of how the Congo has been destroyed. I can only hope that the future leaders will learn from past mistakes.

Bruce rocks!, 10 Oct 2008
In his inimitable style Bruce is bringing attention to one of the biggest scandals in the modern world, no less than the destruction of the most important habitat on our planet. It's something our generation will go down in history for and nobody is doing anything to stop it. More power to Bruce for showing how even some of the people destroying the forest are just trying to survive. We won't begin to tackle this issue until we appreciate that there are no easy answers (if you want a good summary of why the Amazon and other environments are so precious I'm a big fan of Bruce's other book Serious Survival as well).

Peasant France, 09 Oct 2008
This is a superbly written history-cum-travelogue. Robb is known for his books on French writers (Balzac, Hugo and Rimbaud) but here he ventures into peasant France, riding on his bicycle to make the time for the small details of life in rural France. He writes extremely well about landscape, an the book throughout is enjoyable to read. Drawing on travelogues of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Robb accentuates the backwardness of peasant France - mainly for effect, it seems. I found this increasingly annoying. It is an imbalance in the book. The French peasants come across as a nation of troglodytes. The second half of the book is more conventional history on the theme of nation-building in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps better covered in Eugene Weber's masterpiece, Peasants into Frenchman. Overall, a good book indeed, but not without its weaknesses.

Unification and what was lost along the way, 07 Oct 2008
Visiting relatives in France, I often drive down the A26 autoroute over the plain of Champagne: mile after mile of chalk plateau, with never a village or house in sight. I've often wondered how this landscape looked before motor transport, when getting from your house to work the fields involved horse-power or your own feet: was the settlement pattern denser, with hamlets and villages now swept away by the depopulation following agribusiness, or has it always been this empty? Graham Robb answered this for me in this splendid study of the making of modern France: it always was this empty, to the extent that in early cartographic surveys of the country the attempt to find landmarks on this featureless plain led even to particularly conspicuous trees finding their way onto national maps.

Robb is both a historian and expert on France, and someone who has cycled extensively in the country, and he brings to his historical work a grounding in the sheer physicality of the land that I don't remember encountering in a comparable historical work before: he is intensely aware of the distances, the physical effort involved in traversing them, and the network of minor roads and tracks that form a network below the sightline of the motorway driver. He is equally good on the sights, sounds and smells of the French landscape. This appreciation of the physical landscape informs his discussion of how, at the start of the early modern period, much of France was a foreign country to its rulers and the citizens of its capital: remote, difficult to reach, self-sufficient, perhaps only recently added to the kingdom, living according to customs and rituals remote from Parisian practices, and speaking at best a patois of French that the cultivated metropolitan found incomprehensible (and in many cases a completely different language: Occitan, Flemish, German, Basque).

Melding this vast and remote landscape into a unified nation-state involved, Robb indicates, vast acts of state-enforced forgetting, with regional differences ironed out by a centralising state (having seen my nieces go through the rigid centralised French school curriculum, I won't argue with that). Vast riches of local peculiarities, many vanished, are brought together by Robb in this volume: be prepared to bore anyone you live with by reading out a snippet every other page. (Cafés in Paris, for example, were - and still are - disproportionately run by immigrants from the Auvergne. Want to know why? - read the book.) It's a lively read, a chance to wallow in the particularities of the French landscape, a study that raises all sorts of questions about the nation-state, its relationship to "minorities" and the extent to which it has to enforce homogeneity; my only complaint was that it was over too soon.

Fascinating insight into the lost tribes of France, 05 Oct 2008
A Francophile with a penchant for learning about France while taking cycling holidays there, Robb has written a brilliant evocation of a lost world, when most inhabitants of France from outside the Paris region did not speak French and did not think of themselves as being French, and then an equally fascinating story of how the railway and the bicycle allowed the French state to impose "Frenchness" on the country. The book draws on evidence mostly from pre-revolutionary France, but with enough from the nineteenth century to support the thesis that it was late nineteenth century technology that made the difference. The storied are fascinating - I was particularly amused to read of a (mildish) torture called "putting on pressure" that Breton women visited on men that they caught alone, and of the fact that in creating the shrine at Lourdes that village put another local place of pilgrimage out of business. You also discover that the original Tour de France was a series of circuits by artisan journeymen and that France had its own caste of "untouchables", the cagots.

If I think that there is any deficiency it is that there is no sense of connection between these simple, sometime primitive, often poor people and any kind of larger society. Most of these people would have had landlords, and not all would have been absentee ones. Even if they did not think of themselves as French, they would have known, and have had mutual bonds of obligation to, people who did. France, after all, produced enormous armies of conscripts throughout the revolutionary wars, and France was generally regarded as the richest country in continental Europe.

As an Brit reading this book one is bound to wonder whether the same could have been said of the British population at the same time, or whether Britain changed earlier, perhaps, because it is smaller and because enclosure changed the nature of agricultural society more even than industrialisation. Perhaps Mr Robb ought to start taking cycle touring holidays in Britain?


Fascinating. Eclectic. Readable., 07 Aug 2008
This is one of the most enjoyable books i have read in recent years, written in a wonderful accessible style, it contains marvellous detail, and unusual facts about all aspects of France. This is really a first class book, and a great summer read.

Discover the real France, 30 Jul 2008
Graham Robb is a serious scholar. He has written books on Balzac, Rimbaud, Victor Hugo and Baudelaire. This list also suggests another academic and personal passion - France. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University after his degree in modern languages at Oxford, and has since excelled as a writer. This is a rare fusion of scholarly research and revelatory fact, written in an accessible but highly literate and engaging style.

The book is quite difficult to pigeonhole. It is at times a travel book, based on Robb's own personal experience of cycling around France and getting a feel for the immensity of what the pre-industrial nation would have been. It is also an anthropological study of the French, and the development of the nation through history. In fact the central thesis, that the idea of a French nation is a purely modern conceit, occupies much of the book. Robb then sets out to describe what the modern republic replaced. The migrations of peoples, the intricate network of towns, villages and regions, the Babel tongued array of languages and dialects, the cast of untouchables and the tenuous attachment to Paris and royal control.

It is a biography of the French people, an erudite, if potted, ramble through folklore, local history, linguistics and sociology. Perhaps most startling is that the book manages to amaze on every page with facts that even those conversant with French history would be intrigued with. This is a history of the ordinary people, of the rhythms and nature of everyday life. It is an account of a nation held together by the loosest of binds, where the Paris elite could barely travel and expect to be understood outside the Ile de France.

This is at the heart of the book. Robb considers that the bulk of history written on France starts from the central conceit that Paris, king and court were somehow representative or integral to the rest of France. He demonstrates this falsehood with startling stories, from the existence and experience of an outcast group, the Cagot to the original `tour de France', conducted on foot by the apprentice bands of craftsmen and covering the vast internal migrations of workers, the daily grind and difficulty of peasant life, and the experience of those `explorers' who ventured into this misunderstood hinterland, are revealed in a delicious and gripping text.

If I was to be glib I could say this was a Bill Bryson for the literary set, but this would diminish both Robb and Bryson's work. It is a unique and fascinating ramble through French history, with a strong central argument that modern France, and with it the modern French, are a singularly modern creation. This was built over the rich and intricate patchwork of local and regional identities, which, Robb manages to argue with an erudite conviction, were far more interesting and noteworthy entities.

Robb won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography with Victor Hugo and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. I expect this book to win even greater praise. This was easily my non-fiction book recommendation of the year for 2007, and is a book I will return to. It was revelatory, lucid and vivid. Anyone with an interest in France, or in history, will be well served by getting this book as soon as possible.

Dissappointing!!, 27 Sep 2008
I almost set it down after 200 pages. But I decided NO... it will get better. It didnt, just rumbled on at the same old speed. Davina McCall describes Danny Wallace to be a genius- O dear, please.
NOT FUNNY!

A joy from start to finish, 17 Sep 2008
As you would expect from Danny Wallace there is some genuine hysteria here - reminiscing about an unfortunate man whose name was a dreadful variation on `Hitler', impersonating a `furry', making sense of German rap lyrics and general Michael Jackson memories from childhood all had me sniggering, both as I was reading and at various points afterwards.

What I wasn't expecting though was quite how poignant it was at times. There's a few really touching moments, both in terms of what the author finds out during in his `project' and how it's handled in the book. It isn't just a series of funny incidents - it's real, it doesn't always go smoothly, and it asks some pretty deep questions about lost friendships, life and growing up.

Overall though it's just such a brilliantly positive story - a joy in fact.


At must if you are around the 30 mark!, 03 Sep 2008
You will laugh out loud and you will warm to this writer from the start! It brings back memories of your childhood and all the sweets, TV shows and characters that go with it. I haven't read his other books but I will be buying them right away, and recommending this one to all my friends. Danny Wallace may seem a bit odd when you see him on the telly but this book gets you to the heart of a guy who is naturally very funny.

Essential reading for anyone approaching the Big Three O..., 25 Aug 2008
Danny Wallace, writer and TV presenter, is heading towards his 30th birthday and having an identity crisis. His friends all seem to be moving on and as he looks around his grown up house at his grown up display cushions, he starts to panic. One day he opens an old box of paraphernalia from his childhood and finds an address book. Realising he's lost touch with all his old childhood friends; he sets about tracking them down...

Friends Like These is a warm, funny, honest, heartwarming book about rekindling lost friendships and making the transition from being a twenty-something to a thirty-something. As someone who is only a year off doing just that, I could really relate to Danny's feelings. We all wonder what old friends are doing, and we now have the likes of Facebook and MySpace to keep us connected...but Wallace takes it a step further. He actually meets up with them all in person. Now he doesn't have your average group of friends to start with. He's godfather to Jamie Oliver's daughters; one of his best friends is the bass guitarist in a rock band and his girlfriend works on Big Brother! However, he came from ordinary beginnings and wonders if he will find that all his old friends have ended up working in IT! He wonders if they too are nervous about the impending milestone, and would like to make the transition easier by sharing it with friends who have had an impact on his life.

Friends Like These is very easy to read. Danny Wallace started his career as a journalist, so the style is punchy and witty, with nice bite-size sub-chapters. His observations on childhood, on growing up and on friendships really made me smile and the ending is quite poignant. This is one of those books that will make you sigh with satisfaction when you've turned the last page, and maybe feel a little warm inside too!


Ever wondered "whatever happened to..?". Then read this book., 03 Aug 2008
Are you a man around the age of 29? Are you having a strange urge to find out what your old friends from school are up to, and are you worried that it's the beginning of turning 30-something? Well, me too. But now there's no need- you can just read this book instead. Danny Wallace has already done all that, in 2007, and his story is much better than yours, or mine.

Danny goes in search of friends, mainly from primary school, with a very loose premise of 'updating his address book', an address book he's found in a box of old school stuff his Mum kept, though this is just an excuse for a trip down memory lane.

He ends up in L.A., in Japan, in Germany, and around many places in the UK doing all the tracking-down and catching-up that you and I would be doing if we had the time and money.

As well as being laugh-out-loud funny in parts it really is very, very touching, and not nearly as superficial as the premise might have you believe- the book deals with the death of old friends, and explores the need to try and re-contact people and why many people feel that need but some people don't.

This book really will make you want to get onto Facebook or Friends Reunited and track down all your old buddies. I did and I have.

My favourite book of the year so far.

Room for improvement, 07 Oct 2008
So I found myself in Terminal 5 at Heathrow last week and in the process of getting psyched up for my week long European tour of my companies offices I decided to take Mr Frys book with me as a companion.

And, well, its a rather bitter sweet sort of read, leaving you simultaneously amused but short changed.

You see, the author delights you with a wonderful 7 page prologue, dripping in his trademark whit and informed conversation and you're set for the great mans perspective on all things american.

Except its exactly that same dialogue that is actually missing from this book.

What you get is 5 or 6 pages per state, usually with Mr Fry having some form of meal with "typical" residents of the State in question. It's more Dorling Kindersley visits America than Stephen Fry in America. Delaware barely gets a mention at all (6 paragraphs I think) and in what I suspect is a conspiracy to make you watch the accompanying documentary, the lack of substance makes you think all the best bits have been left out of the book.

This is a very well written book, but there's little of Mr Fry in here. I mean clearly its him, he's in all the pictures, but you dont get the feel that he's the one taking you on the journey. This is a man who could make an entire series about Washington DC alone, it would be revealing and insightful and informative and leave no stone unturned. But that's not the treatment DC gets in this book, so I was feeling a little, cheated.

So my conclusion. This is a well written book, with beautiful photography but I suspect the BBC has restricted the content to make sure we watch the TV show. And for that, I mark this down. There's just not enough room in here for Mr Fry to stretch his wings and thats a damn shame.

Stephen Fry in America

Stephen goes Stateside, 01 Oct 2008
"Oh no, not ANOTHER travel book, written by some jumped-up celebrity hoofing it around some unheard of corner of the world, almost gloating at me, saying 'Look where I am, you're not here, ha ha'...oh, hang on! Stephen Fry, is it? I quite like him. And he's in America? Hmmm...I'm intrigued."
And that's how this book made it into my hands. I don't usually go for books like these, but because it's Stephen Fry, I took the plunge. Am I ever glad I did.
Stephen Fry travels across USA's 50 states on a mission: to discover the real America. As a country everyone seems to have an opinion on, this comes as being very timely. Is the stereotype of the 'Fat Dumb Yankee' fact or fiction?
In the hands of any other author, such a journey would be dull and cliched, always ending with the inevitable 'my perception's completely changed' wrap-up. But such is Stephen Fry's voice, intelligence and wit, that his writing leaps out at you, and you can almost hear his voice booming in your ear as he guides you from Maine to Hawaii in a black cab. His observations and opinions are wonderful; insightful yet humourous, thoughtful yet sharp. What's best is that it allows you to draw your own conclusions. All the evidence is laid out before the reader: it's up to you to make your own assumptions.

This is a book that could be recommended to practically anyone and everyone: it's big, full of lavish pictures and crammed with facts, and can be either dipped into or read cover to cover. It's a perfect companion piece to the upcoming TV series. Brilliant.

Great but needs to be refreshed, 10 Oct 2008
If you do not own any pub guides, including previous editions of this one, I would recommend this one highly - it only includes pubs of a high standard (and doesn't just focus on the BEER) and covers the whole country with impressive breadth. Even the lucky dip pubs are usually the better pubs in town - I've rarely been disappointed by one.
BUT... if you own any of the previous few editions of the Good Pub Guide I see absolutely no point in buying this. It is slightly frustrating the way the Guide never changes much. This could be a signifier of good standards, but it isn't flexible enough. So many great pubs are not included (this edition has no place for The Flask in Highgate, one of the best pubs in north London) and yet year after year many of the same ones are, like that dubious Wetherspoons near parliament.
There are very few changes to the previous edition, and that includes the layout and paper stock, both looking a bit old fashioned now. The Good Food Guide underwent a radical revamp two editions back - it's time the Pub Guide did too.

Fascinating and insightful, 24 Sep 2008
Full of insight into the Congo, its history and relationships with its neighbours. The author's personal story makes it a good read, thanks to his detemination, sensitivity and the hardship he endures. The information he includes gives it a valuable educational quality. At the end I was filled with frustation, a sense of futility verging on anger. Colonisation has left scars and horror everywhere. It is understandable that the Congo may want to forget all that it was as a Belgian colony. But what is in its place?
Reminiscent of the potential and beauties of Africa and its people, there is a seeming disabilty for the Congo to rise above its past and take control of its future. The author clearly makes the point that in other parts of the world, this has happened successfully.
If you want to look inside the Congo (Africa?), and try to understand its issues this is 'must read'. But be prepared to wrestle with these issues, which the author so brilliantly highlights, for a long time afterwards.


over-hyped, 23 Sep 2008
this book has a very good intro and that must be what prompted the likes of le carre and william boyd to big it up

But butcher comes across as naive and a whiner, and the book quickly gets boring and repetitive.

to be honest it's hard to believe this guy is a war correspondent, he gets scared very easily while his analysis of Congolese history is oversimplistic and his UN apologism frankly nauseating

one point for trying

Middle of the Road Travel Book, 17 Sep 2008
Just finished reading `Blood River`. Not bad but not as good/insightful as Dark Star Safari. I`m not sure Stanley would have considered Mr Butcher a true adventure traveller but in a country that is a lot more dangerous and corrupt now than it was back in the 1870`s you could forgive Mr Butcher for taking advantage of some of the more luxurious modes of tranport that he did for his Congo journey. The book Gives a slight insight into the extremely difficult circumstances in which people in the Congo have to live, but did not really delve into the heart of many of the issues. One might surmise that Mr Butcher was rather more interested in fulfilling a dream (and self preservation/`dollar preservation` during said fulfillment!) than shedding any meaningful light on this giant of an African country. Nevertheless a worth while read for anyone interested in modern African travel.

Stanley never rode in helicopters!, 13 Sep 2008
Butcher is a vainglorious charlatan. Look at his compressed, hand-drawn maps, and how he tries to distract your notice away from his 600km-long helicopter ride! (p.291) Overland adventurer, my arse. Did Stanley ride 1000km in a UN patrol boat?

And much like his predecessor Stanley, he misuses Africans to achieve his own ends: one of his pirogue paddlers collapses from fever and malnourishment because Butcher hasn't paid them anything up front and has demanded that they paddle double-quick.

Get this from a library, but don't buy it.

Fascinating tale of a country destroyed by greed, 12 Sep 2008
Loved the book - Devestating to read of how the Congo has been destroyed. I can only hope that the future leaders will learn from past mistakes.

Bruce rocks!, 10 Oct 2008
In his inimitable style Bruce is bringing attention to one of the biggest scandals in the modern world, no less than the destruction of the most important habitat on our planet. It's something our generation will go down in history for and nobody is doing anything to stop it. More power to Bruce for showing how even some of the people destroying the forest are just trying to survive. We won't begin to tackle this issue until we appreciate that there are no easy answers (if you want a good summary of why the Amazon and other environments are so precious I'm a big fan of Bruce's other book Serious Survival as well).

Peasant France, 09 Oct 2008
This is a superbly written history-cum-travelogue. Robb is known for his books on French writers (Balzac, Hugo and Rimbaud) but here he ventures into peasant France, riding on his bicycle to make the time for the small details of life in rural France. He writes extremely well about landscape, an the book throughout is enjoyable to read. Drawing on travelogues of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Robb accentuates the backwardness of peasant France - mainly for effect, it seems. I found this increasingly annoying. It is an imbalance in the book. The French peasants come across as a nation of troglodytes. The second half of the book is more conventional history on the theme of nation-building in the nineteenth century. This is perhaps better covered in Eugene Weber's masterpiece, Peasants into Frenchman. Overall, a good book indeed, but not without its weaknesses.

Unification and what was lost along the way, 07 Oct 2008
Visiting relatives in France, I often drive down the A26 autoroute over the plain of Champagne: mile after mile of chalk plateau, with never a village or house in sight. I've often wondered how this landscape looked before motor transport, when getting from your house to work the fields involved horse-power or your own feet: was the settlement pattern denser, with hamlets and villages now swept away by the depopulation following agribusiness, or has it always been this empty? Graham Robb answered this for me in this splendid study of the making of modern France: it always was this empty, to the extent that in early cartographic surveys of the country the attempt to find landmarks on this featureless plain led even to particularly conspicuous trees finding their way onto national maps.

Robb is both a historian and expert on France, and someone who has cycled extensively in the country, and he brings to his historical work a grounding in the sheer physicality of the land that I don't remember encountering in a comparable historical work before: he is intensely aware of the distances, the physical effort involved in traversing them, and the network of minor roads and tracks that form a network below the sightline of the motorway driver. He is equally good on the sights, sounds and smells of the French landscape. This appreciation of the physical landscape informs his discussion of how, at the start of the early modern period, much of France was a foreign country to its rulers and the citizens of its capital: remote, difficult to reach, self-sufficient, perhaps only recently added to the kingdom, living according to customs and rituals remote from Parisian practices, and speaking at best a patois of French that the cultivated metropolitan found incomprehensible (and in many cases a completely different language: Occitan, Flemish, German, Basque).

Melding this vast and remote landscape into a unified nation-state involved, Robb indicates, vast acts of state-enforced forgetting, with regional differences ironed out by a centralising state (having seen my nieces go through the rigid centralised French school curriculum, I won't argue with that). Vast riches of local peculiarities, many vanished, are brought together by Robb in this volume: be prepared to bore anyone you live with by reading out a snippet every other page. (Cafés in Paris, for example, were - and still are - disproportionately run by immigrants from the Auvergne. Want to know why? - read the book.) It's a lively read, a chance to wallow in the particularities of the French landscape, a study that raises all sorts of questions about the nation-state, its relationship to "minorities" and the extent to which it has to enforce homogeneity; my only complaint was that it was over too soon.

Fascinating insight into the lost tribes of France, 05 Oct 2008
A Francophile with a penchant for learning about France while taking cycling holidays there, Robb has written a brilliant evocation of a lost world, when most inhabitants of France from outside the Paris region did not speak French and did not think of themselves as being French, and then an equally fascinating story of how the railway and the bicycle allowed the French state to impose "Frenchness" on the country. The book draws on evidence mostly from pre-revolutionary France, but with enough from the nineteenth century to support the thesis that it was late nineteenth century technology that made the difference. The storied are fascinating - I was particularly amused to read of a (mildish) torture called "putting on pressure" that Breton women visited on men that they caught alone, and of the fact that in creating the shrine at Lourdes that village put another local place of pilgrimage out of business. You also discover that the original Tour de France was a series of circuits by artisan journeymen and that France had its own caste of "untouchables", the cagots.

If I think that there is any deficiency it is that there is no sense of connection between these simple, sometime primitive, often poor people and any kind of larger society. Most of these people would have had landlords, and not all would have been absentee ones. Even if they did not think of themselves as French, they would have known, and have had mutual bonds of obligation to, people who did. France, after all, produced enormous armies of conscripts throughout the revolutionary wars, and France was generally regarded as the richest country in continental Europe.

As an Brit reading this book one is bound to wonder whether the same could have been said of the British population at the same time, or whether Britain changed earlier, perhaps, because it is smaller and because enclosure changed the nature of agricultural society more even than industrialisation. Perhaps Mr Robb ought to start taking cycle touring holidays in Britain?


Fascinating. Eclectic. Readable., 07 Aug 2008
This is one of the most enjoyable books i have read in recent years, written in a wonderful accessible style, it contains marvellous detail, and unusual facts about all aspects of France. This is really a first class book, and a great summer read.

Discover the real France, 30 Jul 2008
Graham Robb is a serious scholar. He has written books on Balzac, Rimbaud, Victor Hugo and Baudelaire. This list also suggests another academic and personal passion - France. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University after his degree in modern languages at Oxford, and has since excelled as a writer. This is a rare fusion of scholarly research and revelatory fact, written in an accessible but highly literate and engaging style.

The book is quite difficult to pigeonhole. It is at times a travel book, based on Robb's own personal experience of cycling around France and getting a feel for the immensity of what the pre-industrial nation would have been. It is also an anthropological study of the French, and the development of the nation through history. In fact the central thesis, that the idea of a French nation is a purely modern conceit, occupies much of the book. Robb then sets out to describe what the modern republic replaced. The migrations of peoples, the intricate network of towns, villages and regions, the Babel tongued array of languages and dialects, the cast of untouchables and the tenuous attachment to Paris and royal control.

It is a biography of the French people, an erudite, if potted, ramble through folklore, local history, linguistics and sociology. Perhaps most startling is that the book manages to amaze on every page with facts that even those conversant with French history would be intrigued with. This is a history of the ordinary people, of the rhythms and nature of everyday life. It is an account of a nation held together by the loosest of binds, where the Paris elite could barely travel and expect to be understood outside the Ile de France.

This is at the heart of the book. Robb considers that the bulk of history written on France starts from the central conceit that Paris, king and court were somehow representative or integral to the rest of France. He demonstrates this falsehood with startling stories, from the existence and experience of an outcast group, the Cagot to the original `tour de France', conducted on foot by the apprentice bands of craftsmen and covering the vast internal migrations of workers, the daily grind and difficulty of peasant life, and the experience of those `explorers' who ventured into this misunderstood hinterland, are revealed in a delicious and gripping text.

If I was to be glib I could say this was a Bill Bryson for the literary set, but this would diminish both Robb and Bryson's work. It is a unique and fascinating ramble through French history, with a strong central argument that modern France, and with it the modern French, are a singularly modern creation. This was built over the rich and intricate patchwork of local and regional identities, which, Robb manages to argue with an erudite conviction, were far more interesting and noteworthy entities.

Robb won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography with Victor Hugo and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. I expect this book to win even greater praise. This was easily my non-fiction book recommendation of the year for 2007, and is a book I will return to. It was revelatory, lucid and vivid. Anyone with an interest in France, or in history, will be well served by getting this book as soon as possible.

Dissappointing!!, 27 Sep 2008
I almost set it down after 200 pages. But I decided NO... it will get better. It didnt, just rumbled on at the same old speed. Davina McCall describes Danny Wallace to be a genius- O dear, please.
NOT FUNNY!

A joy from start to finish, 17 Sep 2008
As you would expect from Danny Wallace there is some genuine hysteria here - reminiscing about an unfortunate man whose name was a dreadful variation on `Hitler', impersonating a `furry', making sense of German rap lyrics and general Michael Jackson memories from childhood all had me sniggering, both as I was reading and at various points afterwards.

What I wasn't expecting though was quite how poignant it was at times. There's a few really touching moments, both in terms of what the author finds out during in his `project' and how it's handled in the book. It isn't just a series of funny incidents - it's real, it doesn't always go smoothly, and it asks some pretty deep questions about lost friendships, life and growing up.

Overall though it's just such a brilliantly positive story - a joy in fact.


At must if you are around the 30 mark!, 03 Sep 2008
You will laugh out loud and you will warm to this writer from the start! It brings back memories of your childhood and all the sweets, TV shows and characters that go with it. I haven't read his other books but I will be buying them right away, and recommending this one to all my friends. Danny Wallace may seem a bit odd when you see him on the telly but this book gets you to the heart of a guy who is naturally very funny.

Essential reading for anyone approaching the Big Three O..., 25 Aug 2008
Danny Wallace, writer and TV presenter, is heading towards his 30th birthday and having an identity crisis. His friends all seem to be moving on and as he looks around his grown up house at his grown up display cushions, he starts to panic. One day he opens an old box of paraphernalia from his childhood and finds an address book. Realising he's lost touch with all his old childhood friends; he sets about tracking them down...

Friends Like These is a warm, funny, honest, heartwarming book about rekindling lost friendships and making the transition from being a twenty-something to a thirty-something. As someone who is only a year off doing just that, I could really relate to Danny's feelings. We all wonder what old friends are doing, and we now have the likes of Facebook and MySpace to keep us connected...but Wallace takes it a step further. He actually meets up with them all in person. Now he doesn't have your average group of friends to start with. He's godfather to Jamie Oliver's daughters; one of his best friends is the bass guitarist in a rock band and his girlfriend works on Big Brother! However, he came from ordinary beginnings and wonders if he will find that all his old friends have ended up working in IT! He wonders if they too are nervous about the impending milestone, and would like to make the transition easier by sharing it with friends who have had an impact on his life.

Friends Like These is very easy to read. Danny Wallace started his career as a journalist, so the style is punchy and witty, with nice bite-size sub-chapters. His observations on childhood, on growing up and on friendships really made me smile and the ending is quite poignant. This is one of those books that will make you sigh with satisfaction when you've turned the last page, and maybe feel a little warm inside too!


Ever wondered "whatever happened to..?". Then read this book., 03 Aug 2008
Are you a man around the age of 29? Are you having a strange urge to find out what your old friends from school are up to, and are you worried that it's the beginning of turning 30-something? Well, me too. But now there's no need- you can just read this book instead. Danny Wallace has already done all that, in 2007, and his story is much better than yours, or mine.

Danny goes in search of friends, mainly from primary school, with a very loose premise of 'updating his address book', an address book he's found in a box of old school stuff his Mum kept, though this is just an excuse for a trip down memory lane.

He ends up in L.A., in Japan, in Germany, and around many places in the UK doing all the tracking-down and catching-up that you and I would be doing if we had the time and money.

As well as being laugh-out-loud funny in parts it really is very, very touching, and not nearly as superficial as the premise might have you believe- the book deals with the death of old friends, and explores the need to try and re-contact people and why many people feel that need but some people don't.

This book really will make you want to get onto Facebook or Friends Reunited and track down all your old buddies. I did and I have.

My favourite book of the year so far.

The magic of the Mediterranean captured in text and images, 19 Sep 2008
The book's characteristics are the elegant, rich in historical and cultural content, insightful but witty and light in touch text and the beautiful photographs of landscape, seascape, buildings, monuments, ruins and works of art which are inextricably interwoven and mutually reinforcing;the impact on the reader is not merely additive but truly synergistic.

We travel with the author from the city of his birth, Venice aboard the Black Swan, a renovated 1899 yawl along trading routes of the Venetian Empire visiting the coastline and islands of the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean seas with Istanbul (formerly Constantinople)the final destination. Some of these lands were former colonies of 'La Serenissima' and we witness its legacy in the form of medieval fortif