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11 Travel Memoirs That Will Transport You to England
These memoirs take readers on a lighthearted journey to the British Isles.
Sometimes reading a good travel memoir can be as enjoyable as taking a trip — and the logistics are certainly easier! England is my happy place and over the years I’ve enjoyed it both in person and vicariously through a host of memoirs about other Americans’ adventures in England. I put together this list of my favorite lighthearted memoirs to help fellow travelers and Anglophiles enjoy their own vicarious trips across The Pond.
The list is arranged roughly in order of the time period in which the authors’ experiences took place. Together, they form an American view of England that spans most of the 20th and early 21st century. Many of the books on this list are less well-known today but are worth seeking out.
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1942) by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough
The Roaring Twenties are barely underway when 19-year-old coeds Cornelia Otis and Emily Kimbrough convince their parents to let them take a solo trip to England and France. The pair are soon entangled in one mishap after another, from an unexpected bout of measles that threatens to derail the trip before they even disembark in Southampton, to a traumatic afternoon in the maze at Hampton Court Palace, to a peculiar encounter with the author H.G. Wells. The two flappers rampage across England and then France with all the panache of the young and clueless.
With Malice Toward Some (1938) by Margaret Halsey
Margaret Halsey’s memoir is full of biting yet witty observations about her adjustment to rural Devonshire during the year she and her husband lived there while he was on a faculty exchange. Halsey’s book focuses on a part of England that’s been less well-documented by travel writers over the years, capturing a snapshot of Devonshire in the mid-1930s. This award-winning memoir was a bestseller in its day but can be a bit difficult to find today.
