The Kingdom by the Sea (Paul Theroux, 1982)

ISBN 0-14-007181-4

The Kingdom by the Sea is the story of Theroux’s journey, clockwise, around the coast of Britain, undertaken in 1982 – the year of Britain’s war with Argentina for possession of the Falkland Islands.

I enjoyed the book, although it is not Theroux’s best. Compared to his best work, The Kingdom is short on depth, but it is saved by the man’s phenomenal writing strength. For example:

‘I was so unaccustomed to a place like Weston-super-Mare that with a little concentration I saw it in a surrealistic way. What were all these different things doing here? They had accumulated over the years, slowly, piling up like the tide wrack, and because it had happened so slowly, no one questioned it or found it strange. And this was also why I could spend days in the seaside resorts, fascinated by the way the natural coast had been deranged and cluttered. … Other towns were like river mouths where, mounting like silt, a century of pulverised civilisation had been deposited, often floating from the darker interior of England.’

(If the imagery appeals, try M. John Harrison.)

‘From here to Fishguard the land was green and smooth, occasionally erupting into rocky heaps, like the great hill of boulders at Wolf’s Castle. Looking north from the village of Letterston, the rocky heaps in the distance were like fortresses and castle ruins. The Welsh landscape was the landscape of legend slightly out of focus, full of blurred castles and giants, and dragons that were actually cliffs. The coast of Fishguard was like that, stonier and bleaker and more ragged than I had seen in South Pembrokeshire.’

And,

‘Most of this western coastline in Scotland looked elemental in that way – as if it had been whipped clean, and was waiting completion. It was hard and plain, most of it. It was very cold. I imagined sheep dying on it. Fort William was powerfully craggy. I began to think that this was the most spectacular coastline I had seen so far in Britain – huger than Cornwall, darker than Wales, wilder than Antrim. I stared at it and decided it was ferocious rather than pretty….’

Theroux elaborates on the alien theme in Sir Vidia's Shadow, commenting that "English" (he means British) immigrants to the US were assimilated, becoming:

'... the bossy Scotsman in his employment agency, the Ulsterman flush with real estate, the pushy Liverpudlian on the planning board, denying me permission to subdivide some land in Massachusetts, where I was born and he wasn't.'

and concluding:

'When had I ever been part of the English system? I had always been an alien, like almost every other immigrant. The people who had been kind to me had also been waiting for me to leave.'
– p. 316

Theroux’s trademark is the thumbnail sketches he provides of the characters he meets along the way. For me, the most memorable encounters in this book are with Fuggle ("I’m not like other blokes.") and, perhaps, the woman he christens Hetta Poumphrey whom he passes in a meadow. The Jan Morris chapter was interesting but, somehow, her character didn’t gel for me. Then there are the places or, rather, institutions: Butlin’s and the hilarious Centre for Alternative Technology. In some ways, they are better portrayed in The Kingdom than the human characters.

However, perhaps the deepest insight into ‘Britishness’ – at least of a certain kind – comes from not from the book itself, but from Anthony Burgess’ (A Clockwork Orange) jacket note: ‘Few of us have seen the entirety of the coast and I for one am grateful to Mr Theroux for making my journey unnecessary.’

And perhaps the best insight into Theroux himself is that he undertook his journey only after living in London for eleven years, and describes himself throughout the book as an "alien."

Recommendation: Highly recommended.

Look and Feel: My edition is the usual matt-finish paperback.

Out-Take.

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