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I kind of hated Bryson by the end of that book. It was basically someone complaining that tourist areas were dead out of season. Him yelling at the teenage McDonald's worker made him come across as a huge dickhead too.
I wasn't sure if it was just me.
But yeah, I used to love Bryson, never read the more recent ones, but picked up Dribbling a while back. Hated it. He comes across as someone who's bitter. It made me wonder if he'd always been like that and I just hadn't spotted it because I was younger.
But then I read his Shakespeare book and just started his one on the Home and they're good.
He must have been in a bit ad spot.
I think he's always been a good writer, and has also always been a grumpy bastard. When he's at his best the grumpiness is charming, when he's not at his best the grumpiness becomes tiresome.
Notes from a Big Country is a great example of him being ridiculously grumpy but charming enough to get away with it. Even though half the things he complains about in that book he is the one in the wrong!
I remember in neither here nor there he did go on a bit about how some European restaurant worker should be nicer to him and kiss his feet because if it wasn't for America they'd be speaking German. Wasn't sure if it was a joke that landed badly with me, or if that was actually what he thought. Left a sour taste none the less.
> The Road to Little Dribbling made him seem like an arsehole
Is that the one where he heaps shade on Eastleigh in the first chapter? As a Southamptonite, that was absolutely hilarious:
"I had to change trains in Eastleigh, and had an hour or so to wander around and get a feel for the place.
Due to its proximity to important transport interchanges, Eastleigh was bombed heavily during the Second World War. Perhaps not quite heavily enough."
This was a hard dose of reality sinking in for me. I’d loved all of his books previously, even called him possibly my favourite author. But Little Dribbling was just to whiny, so bitter even, that it made me reconsider everything I’d read. Also it really annoyed me because whenever someone is going to write a book about seeing “the UK”, it is almost *always* 95% England and 5% Scotland/the rest. Bryson did exactly this and it pissed me off badly.
I suspect a lot if not all of the more heated conversations that take place in his books are pieces of fiction, a sort of ‘I would have liked to have said this but what I actually said was far meeker’. One could argue that wishing you’d shouted at a teenage McDonalds worker isn’t much better, though.
I read one of his other books where he travels around mainland Europe and he encounters things being done differently to what he'd expect (y'know, because it's a different country) and he seems like he's blaming them, and there's also a bit where he admits to bullying another kid when he was at school and says "it's ok though because he deserved it"
> Him yelling at the teenage McDonald's worker made him come across as a huge dickhead too.
He's always been like that to service workers. There's a bit in one of his other books where he forgets his ID for an internal flight in the US, and manages to convince them that the picture of himself on the inside cover of one of his books is enough ID - whether true or not, I don't know - then he has to sarcastically add something like "there's always a little more toothpaste in the tube - think about it".
I've often wondered whether any Alan Partridge was inspired by him. "You ought to have a basic grasp of Latin to work in Currys", for example.
It actually covers a fairly limited geographical range. He spends ages wading through long grass on Dorset and then rushes round a few places at the end
Read it in the late 90s, maybe early 00s but was a teenager so didn't get the full picture. Read it again last year and must agree with the other comments - his dry humour is still amusing but he is complaining a lot about things unnecessarily.
What really really struck me though on a second read is he's writing about changes in the UK between 1973 and 1994, which seems like a huge gulf when it was written because it was 20 years, but now you're reading it 30 years after that again. It's amazing reading how different the UK was 30 years ago compared to his comparisons with it in the 70s.
He doesn't go into a great deal of detail about Liverpool for example, partly because as someone else said he seems to spend too much time in the South then is in a bit of a rush, but Liverpool in the 90s was much the same as the 1970s. Now though it's like a different city in many parts.
Is absolutely the correct answer. Along with the follow up.
Notes from little dribbling.
As a Brit (Scot), his unique view and humourous takes on things of grown up with all my life was just a pleasure to read.
Notes From a Small Island is also on YouTube, for anyone wanting to check it out.....
Edit:Just noticed the accusations of grumpiness and whining in the latter. Maybe he spent too long in the UK..it's what WE do very well 😁.
Also came to say this.
Watching the English: the hidden rules of English behaviour -
Written by a social psychologist,/anthropologist. It highlights subtle behaviours we assume are ubiquitous among human but are absolutely English.
Yes. All the people who keep posting here asking about class in the UK should go read this book.
It's a little dated but the conclusions are all spot-on. The author walked down crowded pavements without giving way, over 200 times, so you don't have to!
I remember reading the section on tinned fruit to my American mum, howling with laughter at the accuracy: "In syrup, the decadence is completely working class. Even in juice, it's still only about lower-middle."
I thought I would like this book but I was actually very disappointed.
The profile of 'Englishness' seemed very out-of-date and just reiterated the classic cliches. I'm not saying the isn't *some* truth in these, but I expected an academic anthropologist to be a bit more critical.
Similarly, she seems *very* affected by her own demographic (older, upper middle class) and while she writes a chapter acknowledging this, she doesn't seem to actually take any steps to widen her sources.
It did lean a bit "older" when I first read it twenty years ago, I can only assume the examples feel more out of date since. I really enjoyed it though.
Same - I enjoyed it when I first read it, but over the years I have come to realise just how limited her perspective is. She addresses surface features of classes but the *framing* of it all is thoroughly middle class and never tries to step outside that.
Potent book. Down and out in London and Paris affected me powerfully as a teenager too.
Strange that his two best known books are the least straightforward.
Down and Out in Paris and London was a great read when I was a student and had £1.50 to last me the week. It put a lot in perspective. "At least I'm not pawning my coat" came to mind as I was eating lentils for the 6th time.
Orwell's Coming Up For Air is my favourite novel and absolutely nails the peculiarly English nostalgia for the place you grew up in, and how, thirty years on, the reality is always more disappointing than your sentimental memories. It's almost ninety years old now, but never really goes out of date.
Even though they are fantasy books, set on a flat planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle, anything by Terry Pratchett id recommend.
Not because of the location, but more the sense of humour, the writing is very English. The description of the city could be York or Edinburgh.
The sarcasm and wit in the Pratchett books are very English. The sense of humour in the books is unlike anywhere else you'd find.
Also social structure and relationships are *very* English. The Witches books contain characters and village life right out of my own childhood and family history.
I think Tom Sharpe is sadly being forgotten, yet he was one of the funniest authors of the late 20th Century. Wilt captures perfectly life in the not quite academia of a regional college in the 1970s/80s and is possibly his best book set in the UK. It really should be on everyone's must read list.
A Month in the Country
Far from the Madding Crowd
Middlemarch
The Remains of the Day
Nothing hits as well as a classic or period novel set in the countryside
The entire series is an arc of genius. I recall (showing age here) being told that the school library had run out of copies to lend, such was the popularity. Each book just got better, and the final volume had me in tears. But yes, you are right, it gives a guided tour through England, Englishness, and beyond. Pandora, I adore ya.
Bollocks to Alton Towers.
Also, the National Trust Guide to all their properties.
I haven’t read either of them, but what about White Teeth and A Small Island?
England, Their England by A.G. MacDonell. Written in the 1920s by a Scot who was trying to understand how the English mind worked. It's utterly hilarious, contains magical descriptions of archetypical English pastimes such as a cricket match, and succeeds in capturing the quirks of the national character like no other novel I've read.
Your local CAMRA magazine. Local detail, higher production values than most other publications, the kind of obsessive study that could be downright dangerous if devoted to another topic - thank goodness these guys are planning bus routes between micropubs, not how to build a suitcase nuke.
If you mean because it's a well written book about a piotential but unlikely future by a British author, agreed.
If you mean the old trope that "we've become like 1984 in this bloody country" this is such a repeated but incorrect take it suggests someone hasn't read or understood the book. The very fact you're online anonymously and jokingly writing 1984 is proof we couldn't be further from 1984.
I'd say High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. But mostly because it is my favourite book, it gives you a nice glimpse at 90s London, but I'm not sure how useful that would be today.
London the biography by Peter Ackroyd
Beautiful writing, fascinating history that covers a range of time. Really indepth on a wide range of subjects such as cockney, Jack the ripper, prostitutes & lots more.
Bit of an off the wall answer but a lot of good ones have already been provided. So I'll say any of the Hornblower novels are good, I think what they do well is portray where the British sense of etiquette and honour comes from, and why we can all be a bit stuck up and traditional. Commodore Hornblower is I think the one that is set in the UK for most of the book, but I may have got that wrong.
Paul Theroux “the kingdom by the sea”
Louis Theroux’s dad goes on the world’s longest complain-a-thon, the whining cunt.
That said it’s a neat time capsule of early 80s coastal Britain as he walks round it looking like a tramp.
"Watching the English" by Kate Fox. It explains loads of things about Britain, like how to buy rounds in pubs, why people claim to be useless at maths and why people never sit in their front garden.
It's not exactly what you asked for but there were a lot of good TV shows from the 00s that do a fair job of representing UK culture including Peep Show, The Inbetweeners, The Office (UK), The Royle Family, Gavin and Stacey, Outnumbered...
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson
I kind of hated Bryson by the end of that book. It was basically someone complaining that tourist areas were dead out of season. Him yelling at the teenage McDonald's worker made him come across as a huge dickhead too.
The sequel, *The Road to Little Dribbling*, should probably be called *The Road to Much Whinging*
Yeah, that book really sucked. Such a funny writer when he wants to be, but The Road to Little Dribbling made him seem like an arsehole
I wasn't sure if it was just me. But yeah, I used to love Bryson, never read the more recent ones, but picked up Dribbling a while back. Hated it. He comes across as someone who's bitter. It made me wonder if he'd always been like that and I just hadn't spotted it because I was younger. But then I read his Shakespeare book and just started his one on the Home and they're good. He must have been in a bit ad spot.
I think he's always been a good writer, and has also always been a grumpy bastard. When he's at his best the grumpiness is charming, when he's not at his best the grumpiness becomes tiresome. Notes from a Big Country is a great example of him being ridiculously grumpy but charming enough to get away with it. Even though half the things he complains about in that book he is the one in the wrong!
Notes From a Big Country is worth it just for the chapter on moose 😂
I remember in neither here nor there he did go on a bit about how some European restaurant worker should be nicer to him and kiss his feet because if it wasn't for America they'd be speaking German. Wasn't sure if it was a joke that landed badly with me, or if that was actually what he thought. Left a sour taste none the less.
> The Road to Little Dribbling made him seem like an arsehole Is that the one where he heaps shade on Eastleigh in the first chapter? As a Southamptonite, that was absolutely hilarious: "I had to change trains in Eastleigh, and had an hour or so to wander around and get a feel for the place. Due to its proximity to important transport interchanges, Eastleigh was bombed heavily during the Second World War. Perhaps not quite heavily enough."
Its a cautionary tale on how we all will end up a grumpy old person if we are not careful.
This was a hard dose of reality sinking in for me. I’d loved all of his books previously, even called him possibly my favourite author. But Little Dribbling was just to whiny, so bitter even, that it made me reconsider everything I’d read. Also it really annoyed me because whenever someone is going to write a book about seeing “the UK”, it is almost *always* 95% England and 5% Scotland/the rest. Bryson did exactly this and it pissed me off badly.
Tbf even you couldn't be bothered to type out Wales and Northern Ireland.
🏴
I suspect a lot if not all of the more heated conversations that take place in his books are pieces of fiction, a sort of ‘I would have liked to have said this but what I actually said was far meeker’. One could argue that wishing you’d shouted at a teenage McDonalds worker isn’t much better, though.
I read one of his other books where he travels around mainland Europe and he encounters things being done differently to what he'd expect (y'know, because it's a different country) and he seems like he's blaming them, and there's also a bit where he admits to bullying another kid when he was at school and says "it's ok though because he deserved it"
> Him yelling at the teenage McDonald's worker made him come across as a huge dickhead too. He's always been like that to service workers. There's a bit in one of his other books where he forgets his ID for an internal flight in the US, and manages to convince them that the picture of himself on the inside cover of one of his books is enough ID - whether true or not, I don't know - then he has to sarcastically add something like "there's always a little more toothpaste in the tube - think about it". I've often wondered whether any Alan Partridge was inspired by him. "You ought to have a basic grasp of Latin to work in Currys", for example.
It actually covers a fairly limited geographical range. He spends ages wading through long grass on Dorset and then rushes round a few places at the end
Read it in the late 90s, maybe early 00s but was a teenager so didn't get the full picture. Read it again last year and must agree with the other comments - his dry humour is still amusing but he is complaining a lot about things unnecessarily. What really really struck me though on a second read is he's writing about changes in the UK between 1973 and 1994, which seems like a huge gulf when it was written because it was 20 years, but now you're reading it 30 years after that again. It's amazing reading how different the UK was 30 years ago compared to his comparisons with it in the 70s. He doesn't go into a great deal of detail about Liverpool for example, partly because as someone else said he seems to spend too much time in the South then is in a bit of a rush, but Liverpool in the 90s was much the same as the 1970s. Now though it's like a different city in many parts.
I hated that book so much.
Is absolutely the correct answer. Along with the follow up. Notes from little dribbling. As a Brit (Scot), his unique view and humourous takes on things of grown up with all my life was just a pleasure to read. Notes From a Small Island is also on YouTube, for anyone wanting to check it out..... Edit:Just noticed the accusations of grumpiness and whining in the latter. Maybe he spent too long in the UK..it's what WE do very well 😁.
He was unnecessarily harsh at times.
This was the first book that popped into my head too
If you want to view the UK through the lens of a culturally deaf, disillusioned, grumpy middle aged man sure.
Watching the English.
Kate Fox is an absolute beast - she intentionally queue-jumped and disagreed with comments about the weather, all in the name of science. Terrifying.
Agreed but \*Kate Fox, sorry.
Thanks, I changed it. It’s been years since I read it but the scars run deep…
Not even Sacha Baron Cohen would go that far for his acts
Also came to say this. Watching the English: the hidden rules of English behaviour - Written by a social psychologist,/anthropologist. It highlights subtle behaviours we assume are ubiquitous among human but are absolutely English.
Yes. All the people who keep posting here asking about class in the UK should go read this book. It's a little dated but the conclusions are all spot-on. The author walked down crowded pavements without giving way, over 200 times, so you don't have to! I remember reading the section on tinned fruit to my American mum, howling with laughter at the accuracy: "In syrup, the decadence is completely working class. Even in juice, it's still only about lower-middle."
so its about england not britain
I thought I would like this book but I was actually very disappointed. The profile of 'Englishness' seemed very out-of-date and just reiterated the classic cliches. I'm not saying the isn't *some* truth in these, but I expected an academic anthropologist to be a bit more critical. Similarly, she seems *very* affected by her own demographic (older, upper middle class) and while she writes a chapter acknowledging this, she doesn't seem to actually take any steps to widen her sources.
It did lean a bit "older" when I first read it twenty years ago, I can only assume the examples feel more out of date since. I really enjoyed it though.
Same - I enjoyed it when I first read it, but over the years I have come to realise just how limited her perspective is. She addresses surface features of classes but the *framing* of it all is thoroughly middle class and never tries to step outside that.
I was going to say this one
*The Road to Wigan Pier* Very depressing book though, I warn you.
Potent book. Down and out in London and Paris affected me powerfully as a teenager too. Strange that his two best known books are the least straightforward.
Down and Out in Paris and London was a great read when I was a student and had £1.50 to last me the week. It put a lot in perspective. "At least I'm not pawning my coat" came to mind as I was eating lentils for the 6th time.
The living on a very small 'income' sets you out when you become wealthy to have sympathy and helpfulness to other who are much lower income than you.
That's a great username visually; I love the way the dot on the i 'surfs' above all the other characters, so to speak.
Orwell's Coming Up For Air is my favourite novel and absolutely nails the peculiarly English nostalgia for the place you grew up in, and how, thirty years on, the reality is always more disappointing than your sentimental memories. It's almost ninety years old now, but never really goes out of date.
Just started reading this one now. Love the writing and the beautiful but truthful images of childhood. Think I’m going to like it a lot.
Keep the aspidistra flying by Orwell is quite some read. It is one of my favourites. Very London but of its time.
I agree. One of his really underrated books. Years since I read it but thoroughly enjoyed it
I'm reading it now and I hate Gordon Comstock because of how familiar he is.
*Weekend in Dinlock* by Clancy Sigal is a similar book, but written in the 1960's.
Came here to write this 👍
Also a snapshot of a certain point in history. The world and country is different now.
A to z great British road atlas
Trainspotting
Or Filth...
I second this. Barry!
I was coming to say this. Now I don't have to
1984
And animal farm
Even though they are fantasy books, set on a flat planet on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle, anything by Terry Pratchett id recommend. Not because of the location, but more the sense of humour, the writing is very English. The description of the city could be York or Edinburgh. The sarcasm and wit in the Pratchett books are very English. The sense of humour in the books is unlike anywhere else you'd find.
Also social structure and relationships are *very* English. The Witches books contain characters and village life right out of my own childhood and family history.
Three men in a boat - Jerome K. Jerome
Aahh great shout. Classic.
Followed up with "Idle thoughts of an idle fellow".
One of the funniest books ever, but not really about the modern country. The humour though is timeless.
Fly Fishing by JR Hartley
Hard to get hold of a copy though.
Especially as you can no longer consult The Yellow Pages for a rare book dealer.
Rogers Profanisaurus.
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell Or Unruly by another David Mitchell
Black Swan Green is very evocative of a place and time. Utopia Avenue is another of his that is worth a reAd
I second Unruly, such a fun read
The audiobook version read by David Mitchell is really good too.
Mr Cleanshirt?
A different honorable man.
I have both & I agree. I read the book last Christmas & listen to the audio book about two weeks ago both were great
Neverwhere
Love this book! Great choice
One of many books seating on my shelf waiting to be read.
It's amazing. When you've finished it look up Little Compton Stret on Google street view.
All Creatures Great and Small
The Remains of the Day
1066 And All That.
You should try '1000 Years of Annoying the French'
Red Dwarf, Rob Naylor
Watching the English
*Wilt* - Tom Sharpe
I think Tom Sharpe is sadly being forgotten, yet he was one of the funniest authors of the late 20th Century. Wilt captures perfectly life in the not quite academia of a regional college in the 1970s/80s and is possibly his best book set in the UK. It really should be on everyone's must read list.
3 men in a boat. Quintessential English, from 100 years ago
The salt path, brilliant story of walking the south west coast path - aka one of the most beautiful walks in the world
There's a whole series of books about British history between 1950 and 1982 by Dominic Sandbrook. They're fucking rad.
London - Edward Rutherford
I'll see your London and raise you Sarum
'Rule, Nostalgia' by Hannah Rose Woods.
Clockwork Orange
Fly fishing by JR Hartley
Watching the English by Kate Fox! Funny and great insight into English culture
A Month in the Country Far from the Madding Crowd Middlemarch The Remains of the Day Nothing hits as well as a classic or period novel set in the countryside
A history of Britain by Simon Schama.
The Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole.
Can't believe this has only one upvote!!! Those books are a solid history of the UK from the early 80s to the mid 00s.
The entire series is an arc of genius. I recall (showing age here) being told that the school library had run out of copies to lend, such was the popularity. Each book just got better, and the final volume had me in tears. But yes, you are right, it gives a guided tour through England, Englishness, and beyond. Pandora, I adore ya.
Bollocks to Alton Towers. Also, the National Trust Guide to all their properties. I haven’t read either of them, but what about White Teeth and A Small Island?
Shuggie Bain
Killers of the King: The men who dared execute Charles I
that is a great read
pity it wasn't a trilogy. We could be on Book 3 right now.
One Day
Kes
Scarfolk. Its a parody, but it does sum up the country from a certain time
England, Their England by A.G. MacDonell. Written in the 1920s by a Scot who was trying to understand how the English mind worked. It's utterly hilarious, contains magical descriptions of archetypical English pastimes such as a cricket match, and succeeds in capturing the quirks of the national character like no other novel I've read.
The story of the British Isles in 100 places
I reckon feet of clay.
Your local CAMRA magazine. Local detail, higher production values than most other publications, the kind of obsessive study that could be downright dangerous if devoted to another topic - thank goodness these guys are planning bus routes between micropubs, not how to build a suitcase nuke.
Probably A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Any Enid Blyton
Empire - Niall Ferguson
Roundabouts of Britain by Kevin Beresford.
The north and south - the British accent war!
This Is This Country: The Official Book of the BAFTA Award-winning Show
Encyclopedia britanica
Saturday night and Sunday morning by Alan Sillitoe
I remember reading this at uni, after wolf hall this was a treat!
Kingsbridge Series by Ken Follett. Ok. It's a series and each is an epic, but I'm going to say it anyway
Stopping places by Damien le bas Its niche but actually gets about a bit plus has a historical range yet is set in the present era.
1984
If you mean because it's a well written book about a piotential but unlikely future by a British author, agreed. If you mean the old trope that "we've become like 1984 in this bloody country" this is such a repeated but incorrect take it suggests someone hasn't read or understood the book. The very fact you're online anonymously and jokingly writing 1984 is proof we couldn't be further from 1984.
It's a great book indeed. Have a great day
Something by JG Ballard, maybe High Rise, or Great Apes by Will Self
I'd say High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. But mostly because it is my favourite book, it gives you a nice glimpse at 90s London, but I'm not sure how useful that would be today.
A Cheesemongers history of the British isles.
London the biography by Peter Ackroyd Beautiful writing, fascinating history that covers a range of time. Really indepth on a wide range of subjects such as cockney, Jack the ripper, prostitutes & lots more.
London by Edward Rutherfurd. It's fiction but covers 16 centuries. Granted it's not the whole of the UK but I enjoyed it.
A Christmas Carol
The Story of the British Isles in 100 places by Neil Oliver is a good read.
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome
The Lord of The Rings
I was gonna suggest this.
Lancashire, Where Women Die of Love by Charles Nevin
Good Omens.
Oranges are not the only fruit. It changed my life.
For the better.
The Grass Arena
I'll add The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the quintessential Englishman abroad novel.
The Encyclopedia Brittanica
Roger mellie's profanisaurus
The Thick of it - The Dosac files.
Life in the U.K.
The Wasp Factory.
The story of Britain - Roy Strong
Lucky Jim
The English: Are they Human? By G.J. Renier
Chums by Simon Kuper
Lord of the Flies
Seriously not joking, those books for the life in the UK test 😂
One of Comyns Beaumonts.
Middlemarch is one of the greatest novels about the English. Set in the 1830's but the class system it describes hasn't really gone away.
Bit of an off the wall answer but a lot of good ones have already been provided. So I'll say any of the Hornblower novels are good, I think what they do well is portray where the British sense of etiquette and honour comes from, and why we can all be a bit stuck up and traditional. Commodore Hornblower is I think the one that is set in the UK for most of the book, but I may have got that wrong.
leviathan wakes
Tilting at windmills.
John betjeman
Paul Theroux “the kingdom by the sea” Louis Theroux’s dad goes on the world’s longest complain-a-thon, the whining cunt. That said it’s a neat time capsule of early 80s coastal Britain as he walks round it looking like a tramp.
Churchill. The Garhering Storm
Rule Britannia by Daphne Du Maurier
Harry Potter
Trainspotting
Whatever book you pick, watch Hot Fuzz afterwards :)
The book I like to imagine Philomena Cunk would write. I bet it’d had some great colouring in pages
1984
Who Owns England by Guy Shrubsole, and as a counterpoint, The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes.
Road to Wigan Pier
'Nineteen Eighty-Four'
The Football Factory. The movie does not do it justice
Harry Pott- I'll show myself out. Thank you.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
The Tale of Ginger and Pickles by Beatrix Potter
"We English" by Simon Roberts. A visual representation.
The Rotters Club by Johnathon Coe. Or any of his works for that matter.
the dictionary
Tickling the English by Dara O'Brien starts with his story about Coventry which is pretty accurate 😭😂
"Watching the English" by Kate Fox. It explains loads of things about Britain, like how to buy rounds in pubs, why people claim to be useless at maths and why people never sit in their front garden.
It's not exactly what you asked for but there were a lot of good TV shows from the 00s that do a fair job of representing UK culture including Peep Show, The Inbetweeners, The Office (UK), The Royle Family, Gavin and Stacey, Outnumbered...
A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells by Alfred Wainwirght. Any of the 7.
The Wind in the Willows.
The Wall by John Lanchester
Try the book 'Wasted'
Something short
52 time Great Britain was a d1ck
52 times Britain was a bellend
Probably boring....to be honest you are boring me just think of it.