HUMBLING AND INSPIRING. I have always been gratified to receive emails and (increasingly scarcer) hard copy notes from British Heritage readers. It is powerfully motivating to know how many of you have been loyal readers for many years, and how many actually read every feature and column. British Heritage has evolved a good deal in the dozen years since I took the editor’s chair, from a history magazine that encouraged travel to a travel magazine that champions history and heritage travel.
Now, we are all in the middle of the next step. With the reinvigoration brought by our new publisher Jack Kliger, and the fresh addition of new marketing partnerships in all areas of British travel, British Heritage Travel not only changes its name, but we will be focusing on a more “Hands Across the Sea” approach—to bring news and build bridges with Anglophile life on both sides of the Atlantic. So many readers travel with British Heritage stories, itineraries and profiled destinations as a guide, among our aims is to bring readers more detailed practical information to use in your planning—or remembering.
TEACHING, WRITING, DESIGNING and leading travel to Britain, I have been engaged in promoting Britain’s heritage to Americans as a mission for more than three decades. So much of American culture and history—literature and folkways, music and language, churches and civic institutions—stems from our nation’s origins in Great Britain. The better we understand this, the better understanding we have of American history and our own way of life.
There is scarcely a village or market town in Britain that does not recognize and celebrate some connection to America and our history. I learned that in 1980, traveling around the island for a good part of the summer on a BritRail pass with a duffle bag slung over my shoulder. Though I had a detailed itinerary planned, it really didn’t matter. If I caught the wrong train, or got off in the wrong town, little was lost. Everywhere I found myself on the island, from Penzance to Inverness, was rich with something to be discovered, and a friendly conversation to be had in a neighborhood pub that evening.
For many Americans, foreign travel is just that—foreign. Europeans just don’t understand our frame of reference. It’s a dream of many native Midwesterners to see the ocean 1,500 miles away. That’s the distance across Europe from London to Athens. On the other hand, if Boston is a plane ride away from Des Moines, what are a few more hours on to London?
Not only is Great Britain the closest transatlantic destination from these shores, Britain is unquestionably the finest first overseas adventure for most Americans. Our common language is a wonderful starting point for all aspects of travel (menus, road signs, and communication with taxi drivers, for instance), as well as for interacting with folks comfortably in a historic church, on a train journey or at the pub. Besides, as I have noted before, Britain is one of the relatively few places on earth where they actually like Americans, despite our differences.
London may be far more a cosmopolitan city these days than an English city. Even a bit of London panoramic sightseeing, however, reflects the hands-across-the-sea kinship that has influenced our American experience. The Baden-Powell House in South Kensington, tribute to the founder of Boy Scouts; Benjamin Franklin’s only surviving domicile tucked behind Charing Cross; the statue of Abraham Lincoln in Parliament Square; the Texas Embassy opposite St. James Palace: all come quickly to mind as eclectic examples. In the Houses of Parliament lie the roots of our representative government. From the museums and homes of Dickens, Samuel Johnson, Thomas Carlyle, Sherlock Holmes and the stage of the Globe Theatre sprang our language and icons of our literature.
DANA HUNTLEY
We learn the tales of Robin Hood and King Arthur’s knights. We study Shakespeare in school, and graduate marching to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.” Many of us go to churches—Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist or Quaker—whose heritage lies firmly in British history. We give to the Salvation Army kettle, work-out at the YMCA and go to Scout camp.
THROUGH 150 YEARS of our colonial history, the American colonies grew and thrived as English, and then Scottish colonists—and trade—swelled our ports from Portsmouth to Savannah. Each arriving ship was greeted enthusiastically, bearing not only settlers and goods from England, but news of the events and intellectual currents of the day from London coffee houses, and of Bristol fashion. Our identity was shaped by the constant influx of these settlers and the ships that brought them. Just in my own neck of the New Hampshire woods, folks live in Exeter, Epping, Kingston, Kensington, Portsmouth, Newmarket, Durham and Dover.
It is hardly surprising that many Americans’ response to their first travel experience across Britain (outside London, of course) is to express how it felt like a homecoming, even if they are unable to clearly explain why. Whatever our personal connection might be to Britain—family roots, church identity, cultural interests, history, Doctor Who or The Beatles—that feeling of homecoming is powerful, and begins the making of many an Anglophile. In so many ways, Great Britain holds our shared heritage. Perhaps you’re nodding your head.
The best news once we are in Great Britain is that it is all so geographically accessible. The concentration of history and heritage within the island is, again, just different from our sense of distance. It takes less time to travel from London to Edinburgh than from Boston to Washington. Public transport is readily available almost everywhere; a few hours can have you in any part of the country from London’s web of rail stations.
Coaches and local buses make connections from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Drive times, too, are modest by American expectations. Whether you drive yourself, or connect with a great tour company, travel days are generally easy. Along the way, stately homes and gardens, scenic detours, woolen mills, castle ruins, medieval churches and farm shops beckon to be explored.
So come along on the next British Heritage Travel journey. And plan great heritage travel for yourself across our sceptered isle; there are certainly always unexpected adventures.