Description

The finest book ever written about England and the English Stuart Maconie

J B Priestley is one of our literary icons of the 20th Century and it is time that we all became reacquainted with his genius Dame Judi Dench

Three years before George Orwell made his expedition to the far and frozen North in The Road to Wigan Pier celebrated writer and broadcaster JB Priestley cast his net wider in a book subtitled a Rambling but Truthful Account of What One Man Saw and Heard and Felt and Thought During a Journey Through England During the Autumn of the Year 1933 Appearing first in 1934 it was a huge and immediate success Today it still stands as a timeless classic warmhearted intensely patriotic and profound
An account of his journey through England from Southampton to the Black Country to the North East and Newcastle to Norwich and home English Journey is funny and tender But it is also a forensic reading of a changing England and a call to arms as passionate as anything in Orwells bleak masterpiece Moreover it both captured and catalysed the public mood of its time In capturing and describing an English landscape and people hitherto unseen writing scathingly about vested interests and underlining the dignity of working people Priestley influenced the thinking and attitudes of an entire generation and helped formulate a public consensus for change that led to the birth of the welfare state
Prophetic and as relevant today as it was nearly ninety years ago English Journey is an elegant and readable love letter to a country Priestley finds unfathomable