My Love Affair with England: A Traveler's Memoir

Paperback - 08 March, 1994 - Ballantine Books
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By: Susan Allen Toth
ISBN: 0345385659

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Reviews by readers

Light reading. Much more than a travelogue.

Within its genre, this is a 5-star book, but it's obviously just light entertainment. What makes it so endearing is the author's very personal anecdotes. Nowhere in the reviews on the jacket were there any references to the very personal romantic interludes she writes about. I am convinced that Susan Allen Toth fell in love with England because of whom she shared it with. Had she shared Prague, Czech Republic, in the same way with her significant others, we would be reading about Toth's "Love Affair with Prague." This will most be enjoyed by romantics, and those of us who were (or wished we were) flower-children of the 1960s. It must be a bittersweet memoir for Susan to re-read. It's the kind of book I would enjoy reading out loud to someone who has shared the same kind of traveling experiences.

A very personal book.

This is a lovely, personal account of the author's many trips to England. But this is not just a travelogue -- I would not recommend it for planning your trip. (I always like maps and pictures in my travel books, and there are neither here.) In fact, it's less a travel book than a peek at her very personal diary, looking at England from a unique, gentle and fun perspective as she talked about herself, her marriages, and her family. MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ENGLAND made me very much want to go see the England she described. She obviously loves the place. My favorite part: the footpaths! After this, I plan to read her other books on England, too.

England as she likes it

I find it kind of interesting that a later Susan Allen Toth book (which I plan on starting about as soon as I finish posting this review) is called "England as You Like It." The England of this book is very much as *she* likes it.

That's not a bad thing, since this is, as the subtitle says, her "traveler's memoir." Toth long ago crossed over the line that separates Tourist from Traveler, and she has the experience and the familiarity with the country that entitle her to experience England the way she wants it to be. "We know enough not to try to ogle the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London, file through Canterbury Cathedral, or pass the day at Stratford-on-Avon," she says on page 306 -- a statement I found a little discouraging since, as a well-read Anglophile who is nevertheless preparing for only his second trip to London, those are precisely some of the activities I plan on undertaking.

Instead, she and her husband spend a lot of time wandering through gardens and exploring rural footpaths. While those seem to be the chapters some readers find especially praise-worthy, experiencing those gardens and paths in print seemed somewhat pale to me. Eventually, I found myself skimming. More interesting were the chapters that were less travelogue, more autobiography. In those, she charts her changing perceptions of the country from her earliest visit as a literature student, to subsequent returns as an unhappily married professor, a recently-divorced single mom, and finally as a very happily remarried writer.

Susan Allen Toth's England is not the England I expect to experience. But then, no two people ever experience things identically -- especially not a place with as much to offer as England has. I can see why so many people respond strongly to this book as a romantic travelogue. I saw it more as her personal reminiscences of paths happily traveled, and I enjoyed it well enough on those terms, even if I never travel those paths myself.

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