You are Awful (But I Like You: Travels Around Unloved Britain
You are Awful (But I Like You: Travels Around Unloved Britain book cover

You are Awful (But I Like You: Travels Around Unloved Britain

Paperback – International Edition, March 5, 2012

by
Price
$41.01
Format
Paperback
Pages
288
Publisher
Jonathan Cape
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0224090117
Dimensions
5.31 x 0.87 x 8.5 inches
Weight
11.1 ounces

Description

"He is a rare comic talent." —The Times "Moore is a talented and very funny writer." —Daily Telegraph TIM MOORE's books include French Revolutions , Do Not Pass Go , Spanish Steps and Nul Points and I Believe in Yesterday . He lives in London.

Features & Highlights

  • A hilarious account of an odyssey across 'unloved Britain'.It began with an accidental daytrip to an intriguingly awful resort on the Thames Estuary, and ended 3,812 miles later: one man's journey through deep-fried, brownfield, poundshop Britain, a crash course in urban blight, deranged civic planning and commercial eccentricity. Following an itinerary drawn up from surveys, polls, reviews and lazy personal prejudice, Tim Moore goes to all the places that nobody wants to go to -- the bleakest towns, the shonkiest hotels, the scariest pubs, the silliest sea zoos. He visits the grid reference adjudged by the Ordnance Survey to be the least interesting point in Britain, and is chased out of the new town twice crowned Scotland's Most Dismal Place. His palate is flayed alive by horrific regional foodstuffs, his ears shrivelled by the 358 least loved tracks in the history of native popular music. With his progress entrusted to our motor industry's fittingly hopeless finale, he comes to learn that Britain seems very much larger when you're driving around it in a Bulgarian-built Austin Maestro. Yet as the soggy, decrepit quest unfolds, so it evolves into something much more stirring: a nostalgic celebration of our magnificent mercantile pomp, and an angry requiem for a golden age of cheerily homespun crap culture being swept aside by the faceless, soul-stripping forces of Tesco-town globalisation.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(164)
★★★★
25%
(137)
★★★
15%
(82)
★★
7%
(38)
★
23%
(126)

Most Helpful Reviews

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You are Awful (But I Like You: Travels Around Unloved Britain)

This book should be compulsory reading for all British ex-pats. After finishing the book I cannot decide whether to move back home (a close but safe distance from Cumbernauld)or burn my British passport; maybe both. It is a very funny book that captures something very real and very sad about the country. The facts speak for themselves in this book. Its not dripping sentimentality but does compare and contrast the rise and fall of a country whose economic growth has to have rivaled modern day China.
2 people found this helpful
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Moore please!!

It may be wrong to recommend something when you are only half way through - but I am so enjoying this book I just had to! I think we have the new Bill Bryson here, though perhaps a tad ruder.

I love the way Tim is so descriptive of his journey around the worst parts of the Uk, in the worst car, listening to the worst music. On the way, there are lots of interesting facts about the places he visits, both historical and present day. I shall come back to finish this when I am done, but I would urge you to buy this if you love the UK and all it's idiosyncracies!!
1 people found this helpful

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