This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect the odd misheard word. Click any timestamp to play from that moment; times marked ≈ are estimated to within a minute or so.
Well, it doesn't matter because it's recording and you can come back and see the link later. So we want to... Today we're celebrating the launch of John's book. Adventures in Anglotopia! So do we want to do this as the teaser and then come back live on the dot or what would you like to do?
Yeah, we'll just chat about stuff. So the, because it's not, we started early to get people time to join the call.
So we want to give a few minutes of people to join because Facebook does its, it's algorithmic magic.
Yes, it's Facebooky goodness. And we've got our pot of tea brewing just off camera here. And so the plan today is we're going to have a little chat about the book. And John's going to read an excerpt. And we're going to tell you how you can get the book. And at any time while you're watching today, if you have questions to John about the book, about Anglotopia, just questions, please shoot them down into the comments, and we will address and take all questions at the end today.
So that being said, we also ask for please be patient. We like so many. Many of you are doing this from our home today. And that means we have kids running around and dogs and cats and the mail hasn't come yet today. So our...
If our dog goes crazy, that's why, because he hates the mailman. So it's, we're doing the best we can.
So thank you so much for joining us. us. So we're going to like properly kick off here in about two minutes. But until then, I guess we could talk a little bit about, you know, what we're brewing in our pot of tea.
We're having Cornish smugglers tea, which we sell in the Anglotopia store at store.orgat Anglotopia.net. It's a mild.
It's not like, it's not like a breakfast tea or an Earl Grey where it's kind of like,
yeah, and it's usually my daily after lunch tea. This is true. I can't confirm. We haven't had lunch, but it's lunchtime, so we're going to have it now. Yeah. Do you want to, I sent you the link. Do you want to share that on our Twitter, Facebook?
I will make the tea. You want milk? Of course. Can't have tea without milk. Can't have tea without milk. What is he doing? Using our lovely London underground teapot that we got from, I bought it as a president when I did the Prince William and Kate's royal wedding.
Hi, Anita. Thanks so much from joining us all the way from Arizona. Hopefully it's nice and sunny there today. We were hoping. open for a nice sunny day here, but it's really cloudy. So I apologize. The picture's dark. We literally have every standing light that we have in the house kind of going to try and brighten it up a bit. So unfortunately, I can't get into our Twitter at the moment. So Mr. Anglotopia, if you'd like to go ahead and share that out.
So our friends over at Twitter can join us. I'd be amazing. So thanks. Yeah, that is a really sweet teapy.
Yeah, it's got four cups that go with it. And it was a lovely gift that John brought me back from the royal wedding. Because I wasn't able to go. Our oldest son, William, or Anglotopia Jr., as John refers to him, was six weeks old. And I just, I wasn't, neither of us were able to appropriate. separately travel with him at that time. So he brought me back a really lovely souvenir, which I really appreciate it. So, well, it's noon on the dot.
So let's shift into book.
Yeah, I guess we'll get started. Thank you for joining us at our live stream. Hopefully more people will join as the stream goes on. Do you have the book? I do. This is the book, Adventures in Anglotopia. There we go. It is a beautiful 300-page hardcover. This is approximately what it looks like. This is one of the first proofs. It's changed a little bit, but this is mostly what it looks like.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the proofs and if somebody wants to buy one? And kind of before we really dig in here, kind of with COVID and what's kind of happened with that?
If you can get it from a local independent bookstore, we encourage you to do that. Just give them the title or, the ISBN number, which we'll put in the notes.
Yeah. So then it's, the platform we're using the publish it basically puts the book everywhere. The big ones obviously being Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the big bookseller chains, but it's also in the supply chain worldwide for those companies. So if you're in the UK, you can buy the book. If you're in Europe, you can buy the book. If you're in Asia, you can buy the book. Yeah, anybody, you can buy the book anywhere.
So it's a hardcover. If you buy it directly from us at our online store at store.orgatheatheathe.coma.net, it will come signed. A caveat with that, though, is that if you do that, you're not going to get it to later this month. Because of COVID, the printer is delayed and getting us our copies that we were selling. So we're not expecting them for another couple of weeks. So if you're not expecting them for another couple of weeks. So if you are itching to read the book now, you can go order on Amazon today and you can have it in a couple days if you're a prime member.
And then we also today, the e-book was released. So if you have a Kindle or Nook or your iPad, you can read the e-book. It's available on all the e-book platforms. When I checked earlier, it wasn't on the Apple store yet, but I don't know why. but it's pretty much everywhere else. And so you can buy the e-book version as well. You can start reading it right now while we're talking if you want to share.
Yeah, definitely. Well, I just... Hi, Rhonda. Hi, Pamela. Thank you, everybody again for joining. We're going to... The idea is we're going to talk a little bit about how the book came about. And then John is going to read us an excerpt of the book. And towards the end here, we will take questions. So if at any point you have questions, that you'd like to ask John about the book or about Anglotopia or anything British. We would be more than happy to field those questions at the end.
So, John, a book, a whole book, not a blog post, which are great. Not a social media post, a whole book. What inspired you to write a whole book?
It's a lifetime in the making. Yeah, that's amazing. So, you know, I've been writing with Anglotopia since 2007, full-time since 2011, but I've never really been able to do the kind of writing I've always wanted to do, which was write books. We've written guide books and our slang dictionary and stuff, but those are very, they're different than sitting down and writing.
Yeah, created a deliberate creation, like notes from the small island or Kingdom by the Sea. By Bill Bryson. By Bill Bryson. or Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux or like an actual book you'd find in the bookstore and pick it up and go, you know, this is a book I'd want to read. So, but running the business with Angletease back in the early days when it was still a huge, you know, thing, like the business was the excuse that I hadn't sat down to write a book.
We were just so busy with the business. Share that word, folks. Yeah, excuse, excuse, excuse. So when we bought our house five years ago, things started to settle down. down a bit and I was finally in the mind space where I thought I think I'm finally ready to write a book and when I decided on a topic I mean because I have no shortage of ideas for books I have a file on my computer with so many book ideas but true story um it's had to focus something that would be that would inspire me to write it because it's a lot of work and you know and also be fun to write and interesting and also
maybe learn a little bit about myself along the way so so we kind of know why you why you wrote a book how did you decide on the so tell people about what the book is about and maybe how you came about
choosing that particular topic so it kind of hit me when I was at the royal wedding for Megan and Harry two years ago and I'm sorry for our camera shakes our cat is rubbing up against the table here our cat named McGonagall yes after you know Harry Potter and she looks like McGonagall when she's a cat so anyway I digress yeah so I was at the royal wedding in 2018 and you know the number one thing I get asked by when I'm interviewed and when I'm when I get emails and on our Facebook page is why why am I such an anglophile she's been asking this question for almost 20 years why do I love a country that's not my own so much and I never really had a good answer to that question because it's it's it's it's it's I've been an anglophile for so long I've loved Britain for so long that I don't like it's just always been part of me and I've never really I never really knew why and I wanted to know why so my goal with the book was to answer that question and so that proved actually extremely difficult to answer.
Because I've heard you try and answer that question a lot. Yeah. And more often than not, what's really funny is in our experience when talking to, particularly to British press, everybody's always like, why? Why Britain?
Why do you love our country so much? It's not as great as you think. So I really, you know, and they say when you write a book, the actual writing the part is that you. part which is not easy trust me and it's the figuring it out and thinking of it all and so I had to do a lot of soul searching which is such a hacking phrase but I had to really look deep within myself and in my own memory bank as to why I am the way that I am and just answering some social media fans here so don't mind us so it became clear and then that that's that's the topic I wanted to do is to figure it out.
And so it really, the genesis of the book really came together in summer 2018 when I had the opportunity to join the Rural Writing Institute in the Lake District. It was put on by best-selling authors, Kathryn Aalto and James Rebanks, both amazing writers. And actually, Kathryn has a book coming out this week called Writing Wild. Definitely check that out. She writes about women in nature and it sounds really interesting. James also has a book coming out in September.
And James is a, runs a farm in the Lake District. Did you give me his last name? James Rebanks, yeah. Great book. The Shepherd's Life, which is on the shelf somewhere behind us. And he and Catherine partnered to create this rule writing institute where they wanted to nourish a new generation of writers to write about the landscape in nature. And that's something I've always wanted to write about. And one of the things I love about Britain most is the landscape.
And so I immediately applied. And I was really shocked that they accepted my essay and I was able to go. And it was one of the most fulfilling weeks in my creative, writerly life. James and Catherine made the most wonderful collaborative environment where we talked with the other classmates about what we wanted to write about, how we wanted to do it. We kind of all workshoped each other's ideas. They had guest lectures, some other authors who came in and talked to us about writing the process and the landscape.
And there were little courses where we did writing prompts and exercises and all through throughout that James and Catherine really wanted to encourage us and help us move along in our writerly thing. And it was like the best thing that I could have on the trajectory of the book. Because I arrived there with the idea that this is the book I wanted to write. And I left with sort of the fully formed idea of how the book was going to go, how I was going to write it.
And I cannot thank my coursemates enough because we all, really, they helped me figure out how to crack the book and how to, what it was going to be about, how I was going to proceed with it, and everything. And so yeah, so then that's how, really how the process started.
So then let me ask you here, what was your favorite thing about writing your book? About writing the book?
This right here. So if you are, if you're like me and you shop by cover, sometimes, going, what did the cover that look like? It's right there. Wrong way. Okay. So sorry. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. That was very rude to me. It was your favorite thing.
It was a chance to be creative. Because when you write blog posts and articles for the website and I try to have creative flair, but it's very perfunctory. This is what we did. This is where we went. This is how. how you can go there, like, stuff like that. So it's very, it's very different than sitting down to create a nonfiction work. And so it was a lot of fun to sort of stretch that creative muscle.
And I'm going to read my favorite chapter a little later. I give you an idea of that creativity where I could really experiment with writing. And I haven't really had a chance to do that in a long time. So it was nice to do that.
What do you think you have a favorite chapter in the book or one of those that you were like, as you were kind of mapping out the book and things you wanted to talk about, did you have one chapter where you were like, this is already written in my head and I can't get it out.
The first one would be, I have a real, it's actually the longest chapter in the book. I apologize to anybody who's going to have everybody who's going to have to slug through it.
But I wrote an article about my admiration for Winston Churchill and how that is sometimes problematic in the current climate, but also why he means so much to me and why he still means so much to me. And the places I've been in Britain related to him and whatnot. And so that gave me a real chance to sort of just spread out 10 years of travel insights about visiting. Churchill-related places into one article and also connected to our modern chapter chapter chapter dear not article chapter chapter chapter uh the next one i think my favorite by second third third favorite because i'm going to read my favorite one later would be the chapter of railways
to nowhere oh man guys the thing with him and railways i'm i'm a i'm a big fan of trains in general
um you when you grow up next to railroad tracks that like you know my osmosis but um when we traveled in britain i love the old steam heritage railways and the the concept of the chapter is that they're railways to nowhere because you you can't go anywhere up then other than back and forth on their small structure track and so it's a good i i know i seem a bit cheeky here and it's really is a good conservation thing but but i love but i i love them so that chapter is all about heritage railways and some experiences i've had and and how really they're a microcosm of things that i really appreciate about britain which is appreciating heritage industrial heritage uh volunteers taking something that was you know that was derelicked and turning it into something beautiful and things like that so um yeah did you have any um so the book
book is full of um things that you love about britain and travel experience that we've had together that you've had alone that we've had traveling as families or as a family was there any um i i know that we've had so many experiences but have there been any particular were there any particular stories or anecdotes um that didn't make it into
the book yes um i mean because it's 20 years worth of travel uh so it's not all going to be in there there were a hundred chapter ideas i saw the list this is a true story and more than 50 of them i started um and i'll tell you a secret probably about a half a dozen of the rejected chapters i've actually already been published on the website did you have to whisper a secret as anglophile vignettes that i've been publishing during covid um there are chapters that didn't make the cut um but yeah there's there's a lot that didn't make it and and honestly there's so much that a lot of it will probably make it into the next book um there will be another yeah so but yeah so do you have a favorite anecdote from the ones that didn't make it in the book yeah uh because we don't want to spoil the book for those yeah this one i have unpublished on the site it's um my first and last pint
oh that's really funny story yeah it's um for those who don't know me i don't drink
ever um zero like doesn't drink it's i just don't like the taste of most alcohol of alcohol drinks and i just prefer not to um there's more to it than that but i just don't drink at all
um well now you should probably clarify well i it's there's a history of substance abuse in my family
so i just prefer to avoid it and so um but when i turn 21 that's a milestone you know you can legally drink and gamble in the in the u s in indiana um so being having been been to britain three or four times by that point we were and you can drink in britain yeah but i never i never did um i thought well why don't i at least try an alcoholic drink but why don't we do it in the british setting why don't we go to a british pub and so we we journeyed up to chicago which is not a far journey which is a which well for us now we're like an hour and a half but back and then we were still in yeah we were still really yeah we were still pretty close yeah we were still pretty close and we went it was
called the the red line and it's not there anymore very famous pub in lincoln park supposedly haunted like
crazy haunted but it's not there anymore and they uh it is the most authentic british pub was was the most authentic british pub we've been so we've heard well i mean when we compare it to pubs we've been to yeah in england at that time at that time it was the most british pubs here are not authentic in any way and uh but this one was as close as we could get and so close in all honesty i mean it was and so we ordered fish and chips uh yum and the barman who was english helped us pick the right pint for him which i knew what i was drinking which was newcastle was it is that what it was newcastle and i took one sip and it was vile and the barman was
amazing the barman was like um like really into it like we explained that it was his first pint and you know like he had not drank a whole lot and what would you recommend for a first pint and so like the barman was invested in getting him this right first pint so i had ordered a pint and john ordered a pint and the barman was so invested who drank both pints it's a great birthday true story that was a rough train ride home so but yeah so that was my i'll i'll i'll
i joga that's my first and last pint because i mean i've tried beer other beers since but yeah and i i just i it's just i it's just not for me um much much to the annoyance of my irish co-workers that's okay it's okay though they understand i'll uh what do they say you'll drink you'll drink enough for the both of us i'll hold up the side for both of us no not really but yeah i'm gonna publish it on the website soon i just haven't had a chance to do it yeah
yeah but it was it that was a fun experience and that was um and that was actually a stateside experience so um but then i i the problem with that chapter though
when this is an insight into the creative process was that i have a chapter about pubs in the book already and actually that's so good that's the excerpt i published today on Anglotopia dot net go read it i think
it's one of my favorites by the way because it evokes that feeling of being in a it's there is no place else on earth even when you go to a english pub somewhere else um there is no place on earth like a true really good english pub you know where the flagstone floor has been laid you know has been worn down from you know generations of generations to generations of people who have you know gathered at the pub as as as and not just as a watering hole but as the heart of a community in a lot of ways and and there is a really special feeling when you go into a british pub and i think out of all the chapters in the book that is probably my favorite and it i think it's my favorite because you've captured the feeling so incredibly well thank you and when i was developmentally landing the
book um shout out to aaron more who helped me development landed the book which helped really turn it into what it is today she writes for Anglotopia in the magazine um she's an i're gonna expect with lives in london she's to work in the public industry so shout out to aaron um she pointed out that i've got this great pub chapter i've got another pub chapter about how i don't how i had a not not a bad experience but i don't really like to drink and so it didn't really fit when there was already a pub chapter so it got the cut and we didn't like one he didn't want to smash yeah it didn't fit and it didn't want it didn't fit in the other one because of what i was trying to evoke so it just got cut cut cut so yeah yeah
yeah okay well um we'll have john read an excerpt here right around 12 30 um i apologize if you can hear a chime in the background um that is our washing machine going so again um for those of you who may be just joining us welcome today we're celebrating the launch of john's book adventures in Anglotopia this beauty right back here um and we're just we're just having a little chit chat about how the book was created and what the book is about and um you know you can click the link and go back and catch the beginning if you're just joining us now
yeah and if uh and if you are have a trigger finger it itchy trigger finger and you want to buy it yeah it's for sale today wow go to adventures and Anglotopia.com um and that you'll find
the links to buy it everywhere um and you can buy it from an independent bookseller if you want um just grab the isbn number they can go ahead and order it from you you can order it direct from us
it will come signed and if you leave a note i can inscribe it as well so keep in mind though unfortunately
due to delays with covid um if you do order it from us we cannot get it to you um right away we are
still waiting on copies to arrive yeah they'll be here they'll be with you later this month so hopefully like fingers crossed but if you want it now get it from amazon or get the ebook or an indie seller or an indie bookstore they can get it for you yeah wherever wherever you feel comfortable buying a book from
so well that's that's that's really exciting um can you tell us a little bit about um kind of a look in the feel of the book because um it's got this really great picture iconic picture of
gold hill explain kind of the how we gold hill is and there's a whole chapter you know what that looks like so show them there's a whole chapter in the book about gold hill and our relationship and there's also a lot in our relationship about this place up down cottage a shout out to jane and simon i don't know if you're watching but um it's uh gold hill is a
special place for me you can rent that cottage that's why we're talking about that and then it
it became a special place for us really special place for us and it really kind of sums up everything i love about england in a picture and in a scene and in a place and when you combine that with the experiences we've had so it seemed the the most appropriate thing to put on the cover of this book because really that's what this book is about um it's not about the specific place but it's about what that place means to me um and there's a whole chapter on why that is and um yeah um do you should you should i tell the whole story because it's in the book i don't want to give any spoilers you could give the cliff notes version yeah i mean it's if you followed Anglotopia for a while it's the story you probably already know um but but you know back in high school i was in a in a hobby lobby and i saw this poster a hobby store a hobby store if you're not familiar i saw this poster of uh of this scene and i loved it and it tickled my angle's anglophile fancy and so i purchased it and i put it on my wall next to my bed and it kind of became like a talisman for me it was you know when you're in high school everything the world seems like it's going to end everything is terrible and you know you get depressed and so i thought you know nothing i'm going through uh can be that bad because one day i'm going to go here it was on your wall when we met yeah it was on your wall when we met yeah you know and so it was like a motivation factor that get through high school get through all this crap because one day you will go there and yeah and so um eventually i did go there with you
actually yeah he took me he i remember we were we were just sitting around and he was like hey do you want to go to london and i was like yeah sure okay let's go to london like i never thought we would go to london i just i didn't think he would do it and like he was like okay um that was the last later yeah i bought plane tickets for both of us and i was like wait what you did what
yeah and so we were there in london in london and i and i wanted to go to gold hill but it's not an easy thing to get to when you're 19 years old and don't have a car and don't know how public transportation right and really kind of don't know how the world works and don't know really know how the world works because we you know we were like john snow back then we
do nothing oh man what does that make me then this good freak you're a grit oh my gosh oh my gosh no okay so he really wanted to go right and but then and it
i don't know how to describe this but i get like a malaysy thing where i'm like well i don't want to go
through all the things to do it because back then you had to call yeah order the tickets for the train
yeah i just was just it was like too much for me so um she grabbed the phone well he was like okay you know
i don't want to do the phone thing and order the tickets and that just feels weird and it's a credit card over the phone and i'm like give me the phone we did not come this far and to not go to not go to your to not go like give me the phone and so we ordered tickets
yeah and then it was the next day i think yeah we went on uh what seemed like a journey forever yeah because we had a we had a we had a we learned what a railway replacement bus was oh it was a whole adventure we was a whole adventure and we eventually showed up there and in gillingham right in gillingham which is the town next to shaftsbury where gold hill is and we took a taxi and the taxi taxi driver was like you're aware he was like he was like he was perplexed as to why we would ever come there yeah like we've experienced it a lot because there's a lot of places people are like why are you here like because it's amazing that's why and beautiful and so um we you know he drove us to shasperry and when you when you drive into shasbury um you don't see gold hill it's it's behind the town hall around you have to go down an alley and then there it is and and then there it was and we saw it was like it was like i had transported myself into the picture that they've been on my wall for five years yeah and it was a
really powerful thing to witness actually and because the look on your face i felt like i'd come home yeah standing there was just it was it was an incredible thing to witness and we'll have to find the picture and put it up and he's 19 and he has this little sweet baby face um no beard no beard no beard um hair yeah well you're 19 and and and and and what's really funny about that story is that we literally we went it was like early march or late
no it was it was mid-march it was like mid-march because you proposed on that trip spring break yeah not on
gold hill but uh um um but uh but we experienced like every season that dorisitt had to offer in like an hour and a half i'm not kidding it was bizarre we sat in the cafe at the top of the hill had a cup of tea
and it was just like couldn't believe that i was there um and we went back a few times and stated the local bmbee so it became a place that that we would go amazing experience we had there too yeah it became a place that like that's that became the default place we wanted to go because
we loved it there so much um and i did too i mean it became it was originally his place and very much your special place but over time it became our special place
and then it became more special when um up down cottage which is sorry it's reverse so um they they they purchased the cottage in 2006 and turned it into a holiday let and it's so beautiful you could stay there you could stay on gold hill you would say where we stayed just and uh one of the first things we did after Anglotopia kind of started to take off was we went and stayed there we won the british airways contest british airways contest british airways face-to-face contest
yeah back in 2009 yeah that was crazy that was the most amazing trip i was a whirlwind it was whirlwind i mean we literally had like four or five days and we you know we had gotten to a point i think that we had traveled back and forth enough to britain and that was our first experience kind of staying in a cottage of our own of our our own you know where we're not you know where we could cook and we we discovered the show peep show on that trip and the IT crowd and all kinds of fun stuff and it was staying on gold
hill really cemented it in our in my own consciousness that this was like my place yeah because you when you're when you stay in the cottage is so quiet and you hear all the noise of the hill you hear the rhythms of the day there's a beautiful back garden with expansive views of the blackmore veil um it's just birds the club collapse of the horses going down the lane like like it's it's literally an english paradise and i want to be there every day um and that's the first place we're going to go when we can when yeah when it's safe when it's safe to travel again and so um but it's not 1230 yeah so if you want to learn more about shasper and gold hill and all that it's in the book
it is and you can go to the website um there's tons and tons and tons of articles about shaftsbury gold yeah i've written i've written on the website extensively
about our experiences of uptown cottage um shout out to jane and simon um and and well in the cottage we should we should my boss is texting me taking the piss out of me on the facebook live hey watch your mouth not cool i see you you you're watching yep okay so john
is going to read an excerpt um from the book um adventures in Anglotopia which is officially for sale today you can order it direct again from us if you'd like but please note there will be a delay due to covid um we are still awaiting the books to come in um people cannot read it if you move it okay we're still waiting for our copies to come in if you order it direct from us it will be signed if you have to get your hands on it today you can order from any um any bookseller um will have it ship there's also an ebook um you can find that at can they buy the book adventures and ingletopia.com yes okay all right so tell us about the the
excerpt you're going to read real quick all right i'm going to read my favorite chapter um or maybe it's not um it's not very long it's not very long okay they won't take it will probably take 15 minutes to read through um and uh you know britain is famous for its stately homes and grand houses and downtown abbey and all that and when we've traveled over the years we visited a lot of them um so many of them well they all kind of blur they all kind of blur together although some of them them don't some of them definitely they all kind of blend together which is the device i use for this chapter um where i kind of write about my appreciation for stately homes and rather than continue to explain it why don't i read it so let me have a sip of tea and we'll start so I've never done this before so just caveat there forgive me just take your time it's called the stately home your journey to the stately home starts with a long driveway that takes you far away from the local village with the same name the driveway is a single-track lane possibly in need of maintenance occasionally another car comes in the opposite direction and you both have to drive off the road slightly into the grass to let each other pass there is no sign indicating the stately home is nearby there are fallen trees on the grounds later you learn this is a part of their conservation management of the land there might even be deer milling about occasionally crossing the road and forcing your wife to shout deer then you round a bend and there it is sitting perfectly in the landscape as if it was planned which of course it was green hills surround it there's a fine grass lawn leading practically right up to the door with a small tan gravel driveway that will crunch under your feet when you walk on it you pause to admire the view hoping no one honks at you from behind you may even pull the camera out and snap the perfect picture of the grand old house sitting in the landscape the house is paladin obviously maybe neo-gothic or possibly a mishmash of many architectural styles but probably paladin the minimalist classical architecture imported from europe the house is at least 300 years old in its current form at least the palladian facade hides elements that are far older some say the house states back to before william the conqueror you have trouble believing that anything can possibly stand for over a thousand years but this is england there are plenty of things that has stood for much longer you continued along the drive until you get to the car park it's what the british call a bodge job basically a muddy area that was once grass but has been worn away by the legions of visitors who have come to see this very famous house thankfully you brought your wellies with you and your umbrella because it's raining you parked the car shockingly you have to pay to park the car but you brush it off thinking every bit helps keep the house in order the walk from the car park takes you on a circuitous route and you begin to think that you're being led astray eventually you arrive at the swanky new visitor center newly constructed using heritage lottery money and designed to blend into the landscape so it doesn't detract from the grandeur of the very famous house you pay your admission grateful you got a slight discount for some reason because the full admission price for a family of four was almost 100 pounds but you brush it off again thinking it all goes to a good cause you're a lot past the gate and into the gardens the gardens are what the place is really famous for but you're not here to see the gardens you want to see the house still the gardens suck you in with their sublime beauty it's raining but the garden is still in full bloom vibrant colors surround you you follow the path and come to a lake man made by the famous landscape architect with a name that sounds made up they had to damn every an entire river to make this view arcadian that's what the guidebook says and you don't quite know what that means but you soon learn that arcadian means exactly what's in front of you a man-made lake in a man-made landscape with man-made follies designed to look like greek and roman temples filled with fake statues of gods and goddesses but it all works together it all looks vaguely familiar because of all the famous films and tv shows that have been film there seeking the perfect arcadia for lush romantic period pieces you follow the path around the lake desperately seeking the house you catch a chill conveniently one of the follies has been turned into a cafe offering cheap cups of tea and biscuits it's enough to warm your cockles on this cold and rainy summer day or spring or autumn but not winter because the house and gardens are closed then you sip your tea and admire the view again what time is it it it suddenly doesn't matter because you're an artificially timeless land and you don't want to leave you look to your left and see the famous temple from that scene in that movie with the rain or you turn to your right and see the lake with the sexy man who comes out of the water you look up and imagine an alien invasion coming from the sky hollywood movies sure find some created uses for these grand old stately homes most of all you remember feeling you remember that feeling you had watching that perfect period drama for the first time you sigh content that the place that you you watched was real and you're there to share it with your loved ones or family you've had enough of the garden and the rain the sun comes out as you make your way to the house the house is famous all around the world it was on that one tv show that everyone was talking about when you round a corner leaving the gardens there it is and you pause then you remember you have to return to the concept of time because your tickets to the house are on a time entry system to contend with the flow of all the people who've come from all over the world simply to look at the place thankfully or bang on time and as you approach the house all the scenes and all the movies and all the tv shows you've seen what the house begin playing in your head perhaps you start humming that iconic theme song you enter the house and enter into an immediately disappointing entryway it's not grand like on the tv show and then you realize thanks to the information in the pamphlet included with your ticket that most of the interiors were filmed elsewhere on a soundstage but it doesn't matter you you're still there and it looks vaguely familiar there's a fire roaring in the entryway you suspect the fire is roaring the entire year because it's july and it's still freezing in the house perhaps the home is still owned by the ancient family that has always owned it despite the decline of the british aristocracy of the privations of war onerous death taxes and generations of inbreeding they've managed to hang onto the place or perhaps they didn't and now belongs to the national trust who try to maintain the house as it was in its long gone hands heyday but the family still gets to live there in a small apartment of 20 rooms at the back of the house the house is in a perpetual state of shabbiness that's the way the national trust got the house and that's the way they'll probably keep it or perhaps the charity that now runs the house will keep it that way either way everyone is well aware that the selling point of this house is that it never changes it was reluctantly open to visitors on strange on strange days of the year as a consequence it feels like it's always filled with too many people there is no guided tour you're trusted to wander around on a set path through the house there's a docent in every room perfectly willing to talk your ear off about some obscure element of the room sometimes you let them because it's interesting sometimes you can't wait to get out of the room because the person is slightly worrying you with a nervous tick or a bad smell you wish that wasn't the case because there was something interesting in the room but you couldn't find it out anything about it Every room is filled to the brim with inexplicable treasures, the detrious of hundreds of years of materialism and hoarding, a complete unwillingness to throw anything away.
It could be valuable, or not. Every little element adds to the feel of the place and mustn't be changed. Even when the house is closed and the place is cleaned from top to bottom once a year, every item is cataloged photographed and meticulously put back into place exactly where it was. Everything is just so. The pathway leaves. You, from grand room to grand room, then you go upstairs, and the rooms become smaller all of a sudden.
This is where the family lived, and you get the joy of looking at their toilets and their closets. And if you're very lucky, you might even get to see some vintage clothes or that someone's source from a local charity shop. The house has the most remarkable smell. It feels at first familiar, then foreign. It's a combination of dust and mold and old other books. It's marvelous. Then you get to the part of the house that is like to the last.
less ready for visitors, the parts of the house they can't afford to restore because the family is too poor. The National Trust doesn't deem it worthy. Here you can see the real decay of long-gone aristocracy, the echoes of a dead people. Then you find yourself on a staircase going down to the kitchens. The kitchens didn't used to be on the tour, but since the hits of several shows set in stately homes, everyone suddenly gained an interest.
And so now you had the kitchen set up as they were in the past. Even the kitchens were grand. Wow, these people sure knew how to live. That is until their economic burden became too much for the local and state economy, and the house had to be sold off. At least it was sold off. Other places like this were simply torn down or blown up in a farcical spectacle that would never be allowed today. Still, the estate is a center for local employment.
A landscape garden still needs gardeners. The house still needs maintenance men. There's an army of volunteers, too, but a large number of people are still employed to make sure this house doesn't change. Instead of working for an absentee lord with his own sense of entitlement, they work for managers who know how to maximize a heritage of national, a heritage asset of national importance. You come out of the kitchens and back into the open. It's raining again.
You make the soggy walk to the stables or the cafe and gift shop are conveniently located. You have another cuppa, but this time have a proper lunch because no grand day out to a stately home is complete without an ethically sourced local meal. You're tempted by the honesty second-hand bookshop at the back of the stables. You hope to find a moldy old book that perhaps might have once belonged to the house library, but most are just books nobody wanted anymore and didn't have the heart to throw away, and so they just donated to the local charity shop.
As you survey the house and think about it, you imagine yourself living in it. Despite being a place of great wealth, it has a feeling about it that it could be just quite achievable, even if you're a middle-class American. It's easy to imagine yourself as William Waldorf Astor coming in to rescue the place from ruin. Of course, the idea is beyond silly. You'd have to be independently wealthy to own and maintain a house like this. And even if you could, it would be kind of wrong to have it all for yourself.
You look around all the families and couples having a grand day out, this house now belongs to them. And that's beautiful, almost as beautiful as the house and the gardens and the landscape. Even if you only got to experience it for a few hours, you inhabited the place for a time. You finish your cup of tea, eat the last piece of chocolate cake, make the muddy walk back to your car, then go on to the next attraction on your list.
A piece of you stays at that house. If you're in the area again, you know you're going to pay another visit because you can from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., weekends only from March to October, and one week before Christmas, at least.
I love that chapter. Thank you. That is such a great representation of what it's like to visit such a beautiful place. Because there really is no place like it, like a British stately home. Oh, yep. Let's don't get the computer. So, folks, if you have been watching and you've joined us and you would like to purchase a book, you can get the book again. through us. You can get it through any bookseller. If you do decide to get it through Anglotopia, please do know that there will be a delay due to COVID.
We're waiting for our copies to arrive. But if you order from us, John will go ahead and sign the book. And if you'd like to give it as a gift and have the book inscribed to somebody, we can definitely accommodate that as well. If you have to have it today, you can get it from Amazon, Amazon, or your local Bookseller and an e-book.
Or get the e-book and you can have it right now if you want to check. Yes, such a good one. Yeah, so time for questions.
Yeah, if anybody has any questions about, about the book. So I'll start with a question.
Oh, okay. Let's see. So I'll go through this. Why don't you tell me about, what was?
Oh, someone wants to know about the Durham. That's a good prompt. Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. Toni Hargis, one of our contributors, has asked, she wants to know about the Durham Connection. One of the things that I wanted to do trying to find the root of my anglophilia was to trace my family's roots to figure out if, you know, if I had British heritage. And maybe that was a part explanation of why I love Britain. so much.
And so thanks to the work of a family member. Hi, Aunt Missy, if you're watching, we found that on my dad's side of the family that they came from Durham or just outside of Durham in a place called Shincliffe. And when we did our drive from Land's End to John o' Groats a couple years ago, we stopped by. We popped in. Oh, this is really this story. So I don't want to give too much of the story away because there's a whole chapter about it in the book.
But it was extremely moving to visit a place that I had a tangible connection to. Yeah. And it felt, I felt that electric connection, like, this is where my people come from. Shincliffe is a beautiful village, you know, typical English houses. Just outside of Durham. We actually went to the cottage where my family is from. and I think there's a, there's a picture in the book.
And, yeah, so it was, it was a lot of fun to find a place that had a connection to. And so definitely, that's probably another one of my favorite chapters. Let's see, anybody else spent the last 20 years in England, very sad. I won't be there this summer. Your book will help ease the pain, sending good vibes from another anglophile. My answer just came from Salisbury. Oh, thanks for the nice comment, Jill.
Salisbury's lovely, too. It's, we do Salisbury a lot when we're, when we're in Shaftesbury.
Someone said they ordered it already. They also asked, is there lots of pictures? Yes. Yes. Yes. Every chapter has a picture heading. They're in black and white because the book is in black and white because it's, like, color is too expensive to produce for us on a small scale. But you can see, this is the picture that goes with the stately home chapter. It's Dyrham Park in the Cotswolds, one of our favorite places. The chapter's not about that house.
That's about all stately homes. But it's, yeah, so there's a chapter for everyone. And then, is this, is that it?
And then, and this week, I'm actually going to upload all the covers to the websites so people can have them because they're either neat because they're black and white. I don't usually post any black and white pictures.
Well, and then why don't, what are you hoping that people get out of the book? I mean, obviously it answers the question for you, kind of what is the source of your infillia? But what are you hoping that your readers?
I think this goes back to, there's several elements to this. I am a huge fan of Bill Bryson. For those not familiar with Bill Bryson, he is an American who moved to Britain in the 70s and 80s and ended up just staying there. He was there on a holiday.
It was a lot easier to do that. And he never left. He married a British woman and they had a family and everything. And he wrote. wrote a book called Notes from a Small Island, which was a bestseller there and here. And it was really, it's a meditation on Britain and all the wonderful things about Britain. And it, I read that at a young age and it really inspired me and really, really the impetus for Anglotopia as well.
I have all of his books, I've read all of them, even the ones not about Britain. He still lives in Britain. And then it's, so I set out to write a book that I will want to pick up off the bookshelf. And so Bill Bryson's books are kind of the template. I wanted to replicate the feeling you would get reading one of his books. But, you know, obviously with a different voice and everything. And so back at the RWI, Catherine and James said, told me something that, was probably the best thing, but also the worst thing you could say to me.
They told me that I could be the next Bill Bryson if I really focused and really honed my craft. And so that's, that was, that's kind of my goal with this. I want people to pick up this book and get a unique picture of Britain through my eyes. And hopefully that they will, well share it with their angle file friends and get the enjoyment out of it, I got discovering Bill's books and bookstores, you know, myself.
No. Well, I mean, she didn't do any of the writing, but she's had to hear about it for the last three here. So she's been my workshopper on the book.
She's my ideal reader. She was the first person that read the book when it was done.
I was the one that told him, shut up, sit down, and write. Stop talking. stop fiddling about, write.
I recommend everybody get a Jackie. Oh, that's really sweet. That's really sweet.
That's really sweet. But you support my writing efforts. I don't write about Britain. I write something completely different, but I learned through you how to support a writer. And so that means copiate... copious cups of tea and making sure, you know, like, how to care for the writer in your life, like, make sure they have good tea and biscuits and, you know, going, okay, you've been at it for four hours, you have to do one lap around the house, and then you can come sit back down.
Oh, thanks, babe. So thank you. You're welcome. And then someone asked about, um, are we, are we, do we have any plans to go back to Britain?
Um, you know, you know, things, things were not great for Anglotopia at the end of 2018. Yeah. The business hit a rough patch. And so we just weren't able to travel and it wasn't appropriate to travel.
But my goal with the book is, um, is to make enough money from the royalties because books are different than just selling something because you get the royalties like six to months later and everything. My goal with the royalties is to earn enough money to go back to Britain in 2020, assuming international travel is normalized and, um, it's appropriate to do so.
But we're hoping to go next year, um, as long as, um, it's appropriate to do so. And I get, I get the time off of work and you get the time off of work. And, um, we really want to, I, when I, we set out to write the book. book. I wanted to finish it and up down cottage.
He did. He had this beautiful dream of kind of writing the last chapter and hitting save for the last time.
Yeah, in the cottage. But that just didn't happen because of what was going on at the time.
Well, this was a year and a half ago. Well, yeah, but you also couldn't go back and, like, do your final edit. Like, there were definitely obstacles, unfortunately. So the goal with the book is to, since I couldn't do that, is to use it to facilitate or return. So we're hoping to go next year. Definitely go back to uh, uh, uh, definitely go back to Updown Cottage. Um, we have some other ideas that we want to go back to London.
We just, we miss it so much. It feels like our second home.
In all honesty. I mean, I know that it sounds so bizarre. How could you call somewhere where you don't live home? But, you know, if you, we've been very fortunate. And if you count the stamps in our passports, the British stamps. We have like 20 odd British stamps. I mean, so when you go somewhere 20 or more times, it feels like old hat. It feels like home. You know, I think over 20 years of traveling back and forth to Britain, we have learned a lot of the cultural nuances.
I mean, we will always be American in that we, there are things that we will miss because we are just not born and bred British. But as a whole, I think we've definitely learn a lot more about, about Britain and, um, yeah, just about a British way of life.
And they are amazing, but give his, give John to try too. I mean, really, I, we're not knocking on Bill Bryson. he's amazing. But this is, and I've read Bill Bryson's book. John has read all of the, we've actually met Bill Bryson in Chicago.
I was heavily pregnant with Anglotopia Jr. Our first child, and that was, um, it was a fun experience. Yeah.
It was great to meet. I hate to plug somebody else as we're trying to plug our book, but yeah, um, if you want to get started with Bill Bryson, read notes from a small island, that's his best known book. Um, I would, then I would recommend I'm a stranger here myself. And, uh, in his midlife, he moved back to America with his family. And so he wrote about how America had was like a foreign place to him.
Um, and then, um, after that, I would do the notes from little jribling, which is like a sequel to notes from a small island. And that way, he like revisits a lot of what he wrote about, you know, 30 years ago and gets more context and also apologize. Exce he painted the first book. And then his books about science and history are great. You can't go wrong with the Bill Bryson book. Or by John's book. Or by my book, along with his book.
Yeah. Yeah.
So someone wants to know about your time if you, if you've been to certain parts of the Lake District in the Dales.
Yes. I have been to the Lake District. That's where the Rural Writing Institute was held in 2018. So I've seen large parts of Cumbria. We were in Matterdale for the course. And then I also drove through the Hardknott Pass.
Yeah, there's a video on our YouTube channel. I actually filmed the whole thing. So when I wasn't in the car with a camera. And you can see it's the steepest road in Britain. It was amazing. So I've I've explored the Lake District. We've only been to Yorkshire briefly. We went through, um, we passed passed through Yorkshire on our drive from Land's End to John o' Groats, which actually Yorkshire isn't on the traditional route, but we've never been to Yorkshire, so we wanted to go that way.
Yeah.
So we see, did you do you write about that or no? Because I don't want to give anything away.
So I just want to see, maybe in the next book. I just want to say, like, without like really going into it, going into it, there was this hotel we saw. stayed at in York that was in an old train station and like the old offices in the train station.
Yeah. Incredible. The most, I can't remember what exactly what the name of the hotel is, but it's across, kind of across from the actual train station. Amazing. Most amazing hotel I have ever stayed in. Just. Yeah.
So, so Yorkshire, we love the north. And we, we didn't actually get to have it hadn't been to Northern. England until fairly recently. So that's definitely a place we want to explore more.
Oh yeah. Sorry. Sorry folks. Still learning geography. Yeah, no, you're right. That's Midlands. But we loved Northern England.
I need to go back. I actually write about this in the book. At the end of the rule writing institute, uh, James and Catherine had us each plant a tree. What a beautiful gesture. Yes. We had our own little patch of England and there were tears when this happened. Right.
Yeah. After the fact, though, my tree died. There was a bad drought after we left, so my tree didn't make it.
But yeah, I love my time in the Lake District. Um, it's a, I love England's landscape, but I didn't realize that I was missing out on a whole more, much more beautiful landscape in the Lake District because there are mountains and lakes and you don't have mountains and lakes in Dorset, even though Dorset is my favorite landscape. But, um, it's, uh, yeah, I love, I love Cumbria. I want to go back.
Well, any more, yeah, I think we're going to wrap this up. We've been jibber jabbering on for an hour now.
And we've had totally silent kids, which is either a really good thing or a really bad thing.
So why don't you show our audience the book one more time? So again, you can buy Adventures in Anglotopia at any bookseller. Just give them the ISBN number.
Yep. If you want e-book, e-book is available today. You can also buy a, direct from us, but please note if you do. There is a bit of a delay right now due to COVID. So we are awaiting our copies. But if you do order it direct from us, John, we'll go ahead and sign it for you.
Or if you're sending it as a gift, just let us know who you'd like the book made out to. Yeah. So and then. Do you have any closing words that you'd like to? Yeah.
Well, I want to thank everybody who's bought the book so far. Thank you. you, the book has actually already been a success through the pre-orders. So.
Yeah, we did better. You did better. This is really you. But did better than, you know, when you, when you launch a book, right, it's a piece of yourself. You're sending out a really special piece of yourself. There's a lot of me.
But yeah. So, it's um uh thank you to everybody who bought one because it i already feel like the book is a success
and so but still keep buying them but still please keep buying the book please please i want to go back to england please well and and and it affirms that you know writing is something that you always wanted
to do this form of writing and that's the thing is this process was difficult you know through the whole thing and I'm not going to be right early about it. But launching it and having it feel like the success. Why? Sorry.
Launching it and having it feel like the success is motivation to actually write the next one because I didn't, I was not 100% sure that I actually wanted to write another one. But I am going to write another one. So Elizabeth Rodal asked, it's Adventures in Anglotopia. The Makings of an Anglophile. My name is Jonathan Thomas. So if you search for that on any book. bookstore, you should be able to find it. Hi, Art.
He bought a copy. He was one. I think he's the one that got it from Book Depository.
Someone bought the Kindle version so I can read now. Yay, thank you, Jamie. What benefits you more of the hardcover and kennel purchase? As far as direct money in our pocket, if that's what you're asking. If that's what you're asking. If you buy the hardcover from us directly, that's where we make the most money. If you buy the hardcover from Amazon, we still get a nice royalty or, but the royalties the same, whether it's the print or the...
Yeah, if you're asking, which is the better place to get it to help us directly, buy it from us.
But, yeah, if you want to read it on Kindle, then order it on Kindle. Whatever works for your... reading because our goal was to make the book available everywhere on every platform so that anybody could read it however they wanted to so I think oh my goodness
stuff just keeps coming someone says yeah well thank you for buying it from us we
appreciate it I'm sorry about the delay but it just we have no control over it but we were ready to ship them as soon as they get here we have everything ready we just need the books I actually haven't even seen the final book yeah which is crazy because that my my copy was delayed but um so anybody who got it today on release there was
getting it tomorrow you're going to see it before we did yeah this is the true story this is actually happening weird weird weird yeah so all right well we want to say thank you again to everybody who took the time um to to to listen and i hope you enjoyed the excerpt and i hope it you know
interested you in buying the full copy and i hope that anybody who watches this as facebook will
it i was going to say if you've joined late yeah if you've joined late you can restart this at the beginning so we we started at noon yeah and then we'll we'll upload this to our
youtube channel do you ship to england yes i can ship it anywhere in the world um uh but it will take a while um so let's let's you can you can ship anywhere in the world uh we can ship it anywhere from here if you order it um it's on amazon uk so you could order it from them or you can order from black wells or foils or any british bookstore should have it um but if you want to get it correctly from us we yes we can ship it to england um it'll just it'll take a while to get to you so i think
that is where we will end it i think so thank you everybody thank you so much everybody for listening
and please get a copy and thank you to everyone who already has i've noticed a few sales come through
on my phone so thank you stay safe stay healthy stay safe curl up with a good book
yeah it goes great with tea and biscuits it does all right have a good day bye bye bye
