Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I reported updates about upcoming TV shows set in Britain. Heather had a disappointing experience with The Marriage Monitoring Aunties’ Association, but you’ll have to read through some spoilers to understand why.

Book: A Fine Romance: Falling in love with the English Countryside by Susan Branch
Genre: Illustrated travel journal
Publisher: Vineyard Stories
Publication date: 2013

Source: Hardback book borrowed from the library

Summary: A Fine Romance describes the journey that Susan Branch made with her husband to England in 2012. Their journey began in New York because they took the Queen Mary 2 both to and from England.

Well, really, their journey began 25 years earlier because this trip was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their first date. So, we went back to catch up on how Susan and Joe met and their first date (that she didn’t think was going to be a date) in Boston.

In England, Susan and Joe spend their time in the countryside, particularly Kent, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, and Yorkshire. They are enamored with gardens, country houses, and the places where authors lived.

This was a spring trip, so we get to see flowers bloom and lambs gambol. In the spring of 2012, the United Kingdom celebrated Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. They enjoyed seeing bunting and Union Jacks in every village.

The book is filled with stars — indicators that there is more to be found on her website. At first, I assumed that the web page would be long gone, but it’s not! Check out A Fine Romance Appendix.

Thoughts: As I mentioned in my Six Degrees post last week, I knew I was reading the right book when Susan Branch admitted that her Anglophilism sprouted while reading Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson.  That book was about his parents, Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicholson, and includes their shared love for two great houses in Kent with their gardens — Long Barn at Knole and Sissinghurst Castle.

I read Portrait of a Marriage in the pre-internet times and it started me on a journey through many beautiful library books about houses and gardens in Great Britain. That journey through books planted the seeds for the British Isles Friday link party and our trip to England in 2014.

There were many other shared fascinations — Jane Austen, Beatrix Potter, and William Wordsworth.

A Fine Romance is handwritten with charming illustrations and many photographs. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to take a magical journey but can’t quite manage the time or money for tickets on an ocean liner and a long slow road trip around England. I loved making this trip via such a beautiful book.

Have you read this book. What did you think?