Book Review: The Kingdom By the Sea by Paul Theroux

 September 2026 is ENGLAND AS IT WAS month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain' by Paul Theroux

5 / 5 Stars

And then it went bad again, with slapped-together bungalows and parking lots  and holiday camps called Silver Sands and Pontins. There were no people here, but the buildings made this part of Camber look blighted. The beach was undeniably lovely and unspoiled, but at this western end of it were peeling, collapsing huts and rusting caravans and weeds and even a dump full of twisted metal and yesterday’s plastic – this disfigurement was reminiscent of a third world country, where they did not know any better, and just let the detritus pile up as evidence that this rubbish was another aspect of civilization. 

 

It struck me that as time passed some countries with nothing in common but poverty would begin to resemble one another, because, while great civilizations are often vastly different and each culture is unique, everyone’s junk is just the same. 

  

'The Kingdom By the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain' first was published in 1983. This paperback edition was issued by Washington Square Press in November, 1984.

 

From May to late July of 1982, the American author Paul Theroux (b. 1941) decided to circumnavigate the UK on foot and train. He started in Margate and followed the coast in a clockwise direction. He made a point of avoiding the more traveled or touristy locations, using the soon-to-be-abolished 'branch' train lines, keeping to country paths and byways, and staying at bed-and-breakfast establishments.

 

At that time the Falkland Islands war had begun, and it serves as a sort of sociopolitical backcloth to his travels. As he progresses on his journey, so, too, does the war effort. The war is something of a distraction from the severe economic malaise that grips the country.

 

For a man in his early forties, Theroux exhibits considerable stamina in the pages of ‘Kingdom,’ sometimes walking up to 20 miles in a day, this in ‘oiled’ hiking shoes, not $200 Salomon or Hoka hikers.

 

Reading of Theroux’s visits to the seaside towns and villages, which in the early 1980s were showing signs of wear, I can’t help but realize that these places nowadays are profiled in a lurid manner by the Sun: 

 

Sinister ‘Frankenstein heroin’ ripping through ‘Drug capital of the South’… forcing homeless into shanty towns on beach (this being Bournemouth) 

 

Skegness, in particular, wins the greatest censure from the Sun:

 

Skunk-addicted louts & crumbling homes… can UK’s ‘worst seaside town’ turn fortunes around as the ‘next Sandbanks’ ? 

 

We live in ‘worst’ seaside town ranked alongside North Korea – haters brand it a ‘pile of dirt’ but it’s NOT our fault

 

"There's not a soul to be seen on the pier." Skegness. Photo credited to Les Gibbon, The Sun, November 10, 2024

 

 And then there is Blackpool:

 

CRIME WAVE We live in UK’s most dangerous seaside town where ‘zombies’ roam streets & knife-wielding thieves terrorise shopkeepers

 

"Boarded-up homes in Blackpool." Photo credited to Steve Allen, The Sun, March 8, 2025

 

In his travels around the countryside Theroux notes the presence of what appear to be compounds of some type; large institutions “…surrounded by prison fences, with coils of barbed wire at the top. There were dog patrols and BEWARE signs stenciled with skulls. The main entrances were guarded and had turnstiles and a striped barrier that was raised to let certain vehicles through.......The whole affair reminded me a little of Jonestown (i.e., the compound in Guyana, where in 1978 over 900 people committed mass suicide).”

 

These compounds turn out to be the the Butlin's 'holiday camps.' Theroux decides to obtain a day pass, and visits the Butlin’s in Minehead in Somerset. Behind the grim exterior he finds a resort steeped in Englishness: “…a cricket pitch, a football field, a launderette, a supermarket, a bank, a betting shop, and a number of take-away food joints.” He also learns that Butlin’s is a favorite vacation spot for the many Britons who are ‘on the Dole,’ as a week’s stay (as it was in 1982, that is), at 178 pounds for a family of four, is affordable for families.

 

Curious, I went online and looked up the Minehead Butlin’s, which seems like quite the pleasant place, one well worth visiting (?!).

 

Theroux has a good eye for the quirky and unexpected places he encounters in his journeys, which is what the best travel writers do. He is even-handed in his appraisal of both the good and the bad to be witnessed in the UK. Among the good, is Tenby:

 

But Tenby was more than pretty. It was so picturesque, it looked like a watercolor of itself.

For the bad, there is a disturbing sight in Wigan, on a cold overcast June day, of Prole Children at play:

On the way out of Wigan on the train I looked out the window and saw a group of white-faced children. The rain had plastered their hair against their tiny heads, and their clothes were soaked, and their bare legs were dirty. They were struggling to pull down a fence at the back of a ruined house. They were busy and violent, they hammered at the pickets, they looked like small and dangerous men. When they saw the train they spat at it, and then they went on breaking the old fence.

Theroux's visit to Northern Island is bleak and depressing, as the 'Troubles' then were in full force. He finds redemption in Scotland, where Cape Wrath is one of the most beautiful and magical places he ever has seen. The Scots in that area have learned to bend, but not break, with the high (at times dangerous) winds and rain.

 

Theroux is not a foodie, and his remarks in 'Kingdom' simply state that the food he encountered was, in the main, not very good. At a cafe in Middlesbrough, he does abstain from the 'chip butty,' which apparently is this abomination: a sandwich made of french fries ?!

 

The nationwide rail strike, which began on July 4 and lasted two weeks, severely curtailed Theroux's travel plans, as he was forced to rely on county buses, which were overcrowded and rarely timely. As a result, the closing chapters of 'Kingdom' have a forlorn quality, particularly as the final destination, Southend, is deserted as a consequence of the strike:

 

This was high summer, but Southend was as empty as it had been in March.....Without trains, it was hard to get in or out....The physical link (e.g., to London), the railway, had been severed by the strike, and now Southend was revealed in this empty condition as a mixture of river rawness and sleazy elegance.  

Washington Post headline, July 15, 1982

Theroux's message in 'Kingdom' is that Britain is its railways, and when the railways serving the smaller communities are discontinued, it has the effect of transporting those smaller communities back in time, as it were, to the pre-railway era. With cars and petrol too dear for most families, and the bus service so dismal, many Britons were (at least, back in the midsummer of '82) being forced to stay close to home in the manner of the days of horse-and-buggy or bicycle.

 

'Kingdom' is one of the best travel books, and best observations of the UK, that I ever have read. Its 433 pages flow by in a smooth and informative manner (my only complaint is that the book has no maps). All in all, it's a solid Five Star read.