I like travel and I love learning about authors so a book combining those two things sounded right up my street.
And Footnotes gets off to a cracking start with tales of Enid Blyton and her connection to Dorset.
While Enid’s work is controversial, her books were very much part of my childhood and I wanted to learn more about the woman behind the literary empire. Where better to do so than the place she went on holiday?
Written in a style that made me feel like I was travelling with a knowledgeable and humorous friend, first stop on Peter Fiennes’ trip around the country is the Isle of Purbeck, as I believe it’s known locally.
A mixture of anecdote, biography, travel, history and even nature writing, the book makes for a lively and engaging read.
Other authors featured include Wilkie Collins, JB Priestley, Beryl Bainbridge and Charles Dickens who are all given the same treatment as Enid.
It wasn’t quite what I was expecting and the authors were not all ones I would have chosen but I felt he had a good mix.
It definitely sparked some wanderlust and the idea of combining that with visiting places important to some of my favourite authors has taken off in my head.

I struggled just to get through the first part about Enid Blyton. which set the tone for continuing. I might come back at another time and try again.

The title Footnotes was chosen because the book is a narrative of Peter Fiennes’ journey around the UK, partly on foot and partly by car, in the footsteps of other authors. He either visits places associated with them (Enid Blyton, Ithell Colquhoun) or repeats their journeys (Edith Somerville & Violet “Martin” Ross, Samuel Johnson & James Boswell).

The writers in whose footsteps he treads are:
- Enid Blyton
- Wilkie Collins
- Ithell Colquhoun
- Celia Fiennes
- Gerald de Barry (Gerald of Wales)
- Edith Somerville and Violet Martin aka Martin Ross
- James Boswell and Samuel Johnson
- Charles Dickens
- J B Priestley
- Beryl Bainbridge

Fiennes tries to understand those earlier writers by visiting the same places they did and trying to see those places through their eyes. One episode that exemplifies this is where Fiennes gets drunk in Birmingham when following in the footsteps of J B Priestley (1933) and Beryl Bainbridge (also deliberately repeating Jack Priestley’s journey fifty years later in 1983). Beryl was a drinker, although Jack wasn’t. However, they both loved talking to people and a night out in a pub would have suited both of them. However, Fiennes plunges a little too enthusiastically into socialising and doesn’t enjoy the next day’s trip to Cadbury World as much as he might have done without the hangover.

Did I enjoy the book? On the whole, yes, but it didn't sparkle. The book is a mixture of styles. Most chapters, e.g. the ones on Enid Blyton and Wilkie Collins & his companion, Henry Brandling, put the earlier writers to the fore with Fiennes’ experiences adding background colour. As we move through the book, though, Fiennes’ contemporary experiences play a larger part in the narrative. In general, this shift works well: Priestley saw Jarrow when unemployment was 70%; Fiennes sees it in better times: “I am instead alert to a sense of promise.” However, there were occasions when I resented his intrusion and wished he had dwelt upon Gerald of Wales or Somerville & Ross for a little longer. Fiennes’ re-tracing of Charles Dickens’ last journey – that of his body for burial in Westminster Abbey – is all about the modern scenes along that route.

There is a good bibliography at the end of the book, listing the primary and secondary sources for each chapter.
#Footnotes #NetGalley

A literary journey through Britain, following the travels of some of its great writers. Peter Fiennes mixes biography with travel and nature writing, and it's a pleasant cocktail! I particularly enjoyed Enid Blyton's Dorset.

With thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC.

A fun read that I quite enjoyed, as the author follows in the paths traveled earlier by a handful of well-known literary stars, witty and informative, but by no means exhaustive. It was entertaining to travel along with him, and read of the exploits and foibles of these UK authors.

"Footnotes" by Peter Fiennes was not what I expected. There was some interesting diatribes and stories about famous British authors and the trails and paths they walked as they wrote in diaries, journals, and other notebooks that were later recovered.

The stories were biographical from their notes left behind and the people who knew them as they journeyed throughout Great Britain. The stories were just not really that interesting to me. That was reason for my lower rating.

I received this as an eBook from Oneworld Publications via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review of the title. I did not receive any compensation from either company. The opinions expressed herein are completely my own.

A charming, whimsical, eclectic travelogue. Fiennes sets out to follow the footsteps of great British writers, and each chapter covers a different author's lifetime. This could be read cover-to-cover, or dipped into as the reader follows along on a trip. Will appeal to fans of Bill Bryson, with well-researched and witty episodes.

Footnotes follows writer Peter Fiennes on a trip round parts of England, Wales and Scotland as he follows in the steps of other authors. Drawing on a range of time frames and personalities this is quite a varied book including Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, Boswell and Johnson as well as JB Priestley and Beryl Bainbridge. A mixture of travel writing, biographies, history and a look at the changes within Britain (with plenty of anecdotes thrown in for good measure) Fiennes successfully crams a lot into just over 300 pages.
I found reading this book was like returning to university and listening to a lecturer who is very passionate about their subject try and give you as much information in one small time frame as possible, with plenty of asides, jokes and anecdotes to try and make their subject as interesting to everyone else as it is to themselves. In many ways this really worked as the book was enjoyable, humorous in places, gave quite a bit of food for thought for reader to decide whether to pursue or not and debate further. However it did a times feel a little bit too squashed together and the links and parallels between writers mentioned did at times feel forced. Having finished it I think perhaps halving the number of authors followed to really focus on them would have worked better as I felt Fiennes probably had a lot more to say. However nevertheless an interesting and slightly alternative bit of travel writing.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I think this might be a bit of a Marmite book. Firstly, you are probably likely to get more out of it if you already have a deep appreciation for and some knowledge of, the British Countryside, or at least be someone who is very enthusiastic about seeing nature through another author’s eyes. The tone of the book is at times a little too pleased with itself. I think it’s meant to come off as jokey – and to be fair at times it does – but on other occasions even I, a Brit raised on a steady diet of reticent sarcasm, Black Adder and tea, winced a little. Honestly, I think you can paint a writer warts and all without rolling into be derogatory. Or if you’re going to be, maybe prepare your audience for that sort of book. From the cover and blurb I was expecting a dreamlike, existentialist ramble through Britain time forgot and that isn’t quite what’s delivered. The writing itself is beautiful, which is what makes some of the more offhand commentary so jarring. My other niggle is that while I appreciate the author has picked writers who interest him (and if I were to write this book I would pick other writers – so that’s clearly a personal taste issue) it is very noticeable that he’s picked mostly male, white, upper middle class and financially viable writers. There’s no cross section of origins or life experinces. Again maybe this is a taste issue, but it struck me as odd while reading. Overall I did like the book, it just wasn’t the book I was expecting.

t’s a well written guide to where authors of the past travelled. As an American, it’s not authors that I’ve been exposed to but I did enjoy reading about the unique places the authors visited.

Peter Fiennes does a great job tying the physical landscape of Britain with some of its greatest writers. I especially liked the opening chapter detailing Enid Blyton's relationship to the "lovely" Swanage in Dorset and how it inspired several landmarks in her fiction.

My understanding, from the back cover, was this book would be a lyrical and factual exploration of the authors of Britain appreciative of both the beautiful landscape and the authors. I didn’t anticipate the cynical and derogatory tone, an attacking of a beloved author (Enid Blyton) and the swearing, 25% in, I resolved this book was not written for me. It is well written, and if the first 10% entertains you, you are well set to enjoy the rest.

This book is a complete delight. For those interested in the changes in our towns and cities over time or those fascinated by the writerly progress through the UK, this lovely work gives much to chew on. I particularly enjoyed the section on Birmingham to Liverpool featuring the earlier journeys of Beryl Bainbridge and JB Preistly. I cannot imagine two better people to have at my fantasy dinner party - and now I'm going to invite Peter Fiennes as well.

This book would make a magnificent gift or a lovely travelling companion wherever your summer break takes you.

Huge gratitude to Netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read this book prior to publication. This was a real treat x

What a terrific anthology! I really enjoyed this one!

Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. Once, it might have been described as "delightfully bitchy" or some such, but nowadays the kind of sniping the author Peter Fiennes engages in just seems petty; and it's inconsistent and silly, too. He repeatedly notes that one of his sources for the book, Celia Fiennes, was a bad speller; but she was born into a time when spelling, although becoming regularized, was still not standard, and certainly not so across all of England. He enjoys taking the wind out of people's sails on the smallest of matters--the cost of a haircut in Wales vs. in the London suburbs, for example. But at the same time the writing is often beautiful and about places where the atmosphere and sense of history is difficult to convey to readers. He communicates what I think is a common reaction to pollution and the end of species and great forests: a mixture of rage, urgent desire to fix things, and the sense that doing so won't make a difference. He's selected interesting writers with whom to interact and follow, but all of them are white and financially comfortable. It's a very English book--I dare anyone who has ever lived in England to read it and not hear the author's accent as they do--in that Fiennes seems uncomfortable with delving into the more complicated or emotional contexts of the writers' lives and travels, instead smoothing over much of it with sarcasm and unfunny snarkiness.

A book that made me crave to be in the places it describes and discover them through the eyes of writers.
It was an engaging and interesting read, well written and lovely.
Highly recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Hmmm – not what I had expected. I thought I'd find a book that surveyed Britain with the benefit of trails blazed by authors that had gone before. We'd find the nature of the places that were so important and formative to the authors that we'd forever find the two indelibly linked. But a hundred pages into this and we'd hardly travelled. The first chunk (I feel bound to use that word, rather than chapter, for it tells you a lot more) is about Enid Blyton, and dithers with travel reportage from the places she thought of as second home, holidaying there successfully at least once annually for many years. But it also tells me more about Blyton than I thought necessary. Part two is more mobile, as our author shows us what you see today if you follow a travel book a young Wilkie Collins wrote, of life in the south-west beyond the reach of the railway network, but that marginalia is hardly representative, is it?

Alright, we do move, but I felt for too much my knowledge and interest had not progressed, either with the travelogue or about the people concerned. To get to Hereford we pop in on the travel journals of a long-distant relative, then have White Man's Guilt about sharing her name, then yack on about slavery in the most off-topic way. Diversions are ever present. It's only when forced to be more considerate – of the writing and the places – that we get a more readable chunk, viz the route of Priestley that Beryl Bainbridge had also followed a generation or two back. That makes for good journalism, which is fine, but again not what I came here for. I suppose I should, however, applaud the author for the chutzpah in starting the bibliography with the words "This could go on a while, except I won't let it." Would that he had taken that approach with the book itself. One and a half stars.

Peter Fiennes is carbonated. His writing pops with keen observation as he journeys from Swanage to Skye and down again in the literary footsteps of a dozen British writers comparing the landscapes and attitudes they describe against today’s Britain.

Footnotes fuses literary biography with travel and nature-writing. From the rocky coves of Enid Blyton’s Dorset, Fiennes boards the train west with Wilkie Collins, contemplates the deep magic resonant in landscapes with Ithell Colquhoun, and clip-clops towards Wales alongside adventuress Celia Fiennes. Gerald of Wales guides him to Cardiff, and Edith Somerville mounts Snowdon.

He tracks J.B. Priestley and Beryl Bainbridge north and boards the Doncaster train with Dickens. Samuel Johnson takes Fiennes to the Scottish Highlands where a wistful note of longing for a field of one’s own brings us back to Enid Blyton and that image of woodland rambles with a sandwich on a stile.

“Would you go back?” Fiennes asks. “If you could?” Back to those misty meadow mornings, the oak and ash and thorn, something snuffling in the undergrowth: red squirrel, pine marten, wolf. Eagles overhead, fish in the river, apples from the tree. Was life better then? Happier then? Can we even evaluate this? Each successive generation has a changed idea of normal: today we don’t miss fields of butterflies because we never had them.

Though Fiennes’s writing snaps like Christmas crackers, he maintains an endearing humility throughout the journey and allows his ghostly companions to amuse, intrigue, and inform us. But he teases them often, in ever such a nice way.

Did I love this book? Yes. Will I read everything Peter Fiennes ever writes again! Yes. Five stars.

Somewhere buried inside this book there is something interesting trying to get out. The author Peter Fiennes can certainly write, he conveys a sense of place well and is clearly knowledgeable but always readable. However, I felt that the book was a muddle. He starts from the premise that he will follow in the exact steps of earlier English writers. We are therefore introduced to obscure writers such as Gerald of Wales and Celia Fiennes and their journeys are covered in rather more depth than could maintain my interest. However later he leaps about all over the country, for example from the top of Snowdon to Birmingham, apparently in no-one's footsteps at all. It seemed to me that the author was not sure about the scope of the work and that it could have been made either much more comprehensive about English authors' journeys, or rather more slight and selective (the focus on the mirror journeys of Bainbridge and Priestley for example, is very interesting). Either way, I feel this would make a rather more successful book overall.

This is a wonderful read, combining a deep appreciation of landscape and cityscape with the lives and work of several, very different, authors. Peter Fiennes follows in the footsteps of writers and travellers as diverse as Samuel Johnson, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, JB Priestley, Beryl Bainbridge and Enid Blyton on journeys around England, Wales and Scotland, reflecting on how places have changed and whether that change might be for the better or the worse. He includes some fascinating background detail about his chosen authors, some of them completely unfamiliar to me (Edith Somerville and Martin Ross really caught my attention), and describes his own experiences in a charming, pithy manner that appealed to me enormously. His love of his country and his love of literature shine through every page. Terrifically well written and researched, this is a book I’m bound to return to next time I’m passing close to one of his paths. Highly recommended.