Review: Paul Theroux’s The Kingdom by the Sea (1983)
Louis’ dad takes a bleak and occasionally beautiful trip through Thatcher’s Britain
Paul Theroux’s The Kingdom by the Sea (1983) is less a travelogue and more a chocolate box of cynical encounters. Beginning in the desolate suburbs of Thatcherite London, he traces the Thames Estuary down to Margate, before embarking on a bleak coastal odyssey that takes him (nearly enough) around the full extent of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Along the way, he sees cultures at war, as well as communities fractured by politics and unemployment. More than anything, he captures a general sense of listlessness in the people he meets.
This is a Britain that has been left with the dregs of its empire.
Theroux discovers a nation that is still reeling from this loss. He evokes a sense of wounded pride in its citizens, many of whom now flaunt the Falklands War as a last sign of their imperial virility. The conflict appears to have been a point of pride for many, a rare token of shared opinion for a people that are notoriously squeamish when it comes to politics. Several speakers proudly liken it to “the wars”, as if speaking about some relic of better days.
The war in the Falklands plays a looming, spectral role in the narrative, without ever being discussed in depth. It appears in print, on the telly, and on the lips of many an ignorant fool, but information rarely appears without some kind of filter. We’re left to piece together these scraps of history, deliberately tainted with prejudice.
Theroux seemingly enjoys unsettling his reader. He will namedrop some catastrophic loss of life, before (for example) detailing the quirks of an English breakfast. He loves to combine the trite with the obscene in a single paragraph. This technique gives The Kingdom by the Sea an element of farce, portraying various British foibles as frankly inappropriate, given the state of the country’s foreign policy.
Despite having lived in London for some time, Paul Theroux is by no means biased in Britain’s favour. He’s quick to assign blame, and his observations are largely unsentimental. The places he visits are “grey”, “desolate”, “decayed”, or “forlorn”. Rarely are they described as “picturesque”, or even “bearable”. For me, his descriptions often serve as antidotes to the hyperbole of market tourism; they’re hyperbolic in the other extreme. If you ever find yourself being swept away by pretty words, go see if Paul Theroux has written on the subject. It’s sure to clear your head.
As I’ve written in previous posts, I’m a big believer in subjective experience. We all bring our unique baggage into any encounter, we have different moods throughout the day, and our opinions are susceptible to all kinds of random stimuli: a toothache, a dirty look, a change in the weather.
I don’t want to dig too deep into whether or not Theroux’s various observations are correct.
Is Wales really just a friendlier version of England? Is Aberdeen accurately portrayed as a corporate hellhole?
I honestly have no clue.
Sometimes it can feel like Paul Theroux goes a little overboard with his misanthropy. Sometimes he seems to lack empathy.
But maybe that’s the point.
While drifting through rural Devon, Theroux notes that the country has already been mapped by generation upon generation of writers, poets, and cartographers. This rich history elegizes the most miscellaneous scraps of mud, giving them an undeserved importance.
By contrast, British writers would often travel overseas and reduce whole cultures to a single footnote. In my article Colonial Angst, I wrote about this occurring in the context of Chinua Achebe’s seminal work of postcolonial literature, Things Fall Apart (1958). The novel ends with a District Commissioner hugely oversimplifying the events of the story, to be included in his own book. Achebe was parodying the ignorance and the reductivism of Western writers under colonialism, a reductivism which they would never have dared apply to their motherland.
Perhaps Paul Theroux’s irreverence is a means of combating this Eurocentrism. Many creatives are known to have spent their careers singing the praise of a single place (Dylan Thomas and South Wales, Wordsworth and the Lakes, Hardy and his fictional Wessex). This can elevate them and transform them into idealised, figurative spaces.
By approaching these same places from the perspective of an outsider, Theroux injects a streak of realism into our storybook images of Exmoor, Chesil Beach, or the West Coast of Scotland (many of these images have been shaped by fictional portrayals that were written several centuries ago).
That doesn’t mean that Theroux “correctly” reinterprets them, or that I necessarily agree with his conclusions. But it does come as a refreshing change, turning the prejudice of British colonial writing back on itself (albeit by a white American man with considerable privilege).
There are similarities to be made between this book and Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island (1995): Both are British travelogues written by American men on the cusp of middle age, both exemplify slow local travel as opposed to globetrotting excursions, and both bring an outsider’s perspective to British culture. However, while Bryson writes with considerable nostalgia (he had already been living in the UK for many years), Theroux treats Britain like the foreign land that it is (to him). He writes dispassionately about our culture and customs, without any of Bryson’s warmth or familiarity. The Kingdom by the Sea is a colder, crueller, and far more compelling book.
I first encountered it at the end of 2020, midway through my first year at the University of Southampton. Lockdown made a dreary Winter seem all the drearier, and I felt trapped in my supply closet/bedroom in halls. Christmas was coming but my walls remained woefully undecorated. In the bathroom, mould grew like black spinach over my broken extractor fan. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Travel literature was a real source of comfort at this time.
Theroux skips Southampton entirely and whizzes across the Isle of Wight, dipping into the New Forest on his way to Bournemouth. He was moving quickly, and with every page, I felt like I could slightly expand my mental geography of the country I called home, a country which I couldn’t see. With time and a lot of distraction, those four grey walls grew a little more bearable.
I consider The Kingdom by the Sea to be a small part of this recovery process, along with several dozen other excellent travel books. I’m probably biased in its favour, but (as I said before) everyone carries their unique baggage.
To me, this book was a tool, something that distanced me from my surroundings and brought me a real sense of catharsis. I can never guarantee that you’ll have the same experience with it.
But if you do live in Britain, and if you do feel the need to occasionally escape from the pull of our self-absorption, maybe this book could be for you.
Or, if you’re approaching Britain as an outsider, and you worry your impressions have been shaped too strongly by Colin Firth and Downton Abbey, give The Kingdom by the Sea a try.
You’ll be horrified.
