England: More Recommended Reading and Viewing
Nonfiction
For a serious historical overview, wade into A History of Britain, a three-volume collection by Schama Simon. Literary Trails (Hardyment) reunites famous authors with the environments that inspired them.
In Notes From a Small Island, Bill Bryson records his witty notes about every British foible. For more good memoirs, pick up any of the books by Susan Allen Toth on her British travels. If you'll be spending time in the Cotswolds, try Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee's boyhood memoir set just after World War I. Animal-lovers enjoy James Herriot's adventures as a Yorkshire vet, told in All Creatures Great and Small and its sequels. And the obsessive world of English soccer is illuminated in Nick Hornby's memoir, Fever Pitch.
Fiction
For the classics of British fiction, read anything — and everything — by Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and the Brontës. Mystery fans can't miss with any of the books by Agatha Christie.
Pillars of the Earth (Follett) traces the building of a fictional 12th-century cathedral in southern England. For a big book on the era of King Richard III, try The Sunne in Splendour, one in a series by Sharon Kay Penman. The Other Boleyn Girl (Gregory) sets its intrigues in the court of Henry VIII, while Restoration (Tremain) returns readers to the time of King Charles II.
Set in the 19th-century Anglican church, The Warden (Trollope) dwells on moral dilemmas. Brideshead Revisited (Waugh) satirizes the British obsession with class, taking place between the World Wars. A rural village in the 1930s is the social battlefield for E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia. For evocative Cornish settings, try Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca or The House on the Strand.
For a more contemporary read, check out Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding), Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Atkinson), White Teeth (Smith), or Saturday (McEwan).
Films
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) is set in a boys' boarding school during Victorian England. If you're in the mood for something completely different, try Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), a surreal take on the Arthurian legend. Chariots of Fire (1981) ran away with the Academy Award for Best Picture.
A Room with a View (1985) includes scenesfilmed in rural England. Among the many versions of Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 BBC mini-series starring Colin Firth is the winner. The all-star Gosford Park (2001) is part comedy, part murder mystery, and part critique of England's class stratification in the 1930s. Hope and Glory (1987) is a semi-autobiographical story of a boy growing up during WWII's Blitz.
Shadowlands (1993) tells a fictionalized account of author C. S. Lewis' relationship with his future wife. In The Full Monty (1997), some working-class Yorkshire lads take it all off to pay the bills. Calendar Girls (2003) has a similar setting and premise, if a slightly more noble cause.
For lots more information, check out our best-selling Rick Steves' England guidebook — or join us on one of our free-spirited tours in Europe.