The most imaginative city in the world
London
If you are a connoisseur of the internet, a theatre buff, a reader of serious and not so serious literature, a rocker, a devotee of the Escape from the North, an English accent impersonator, a researcher of funny jokes, a victim of baldness, a lover of rainy days, a fan of the Queen and her family, or if you believe in magic, I can’t think of any reason why you shouldn’t love London.
But what do we find when we put these impressions aside and look at London again?
We got to experience London life in the flesh for you, and found that not only are the people here incredibly nice, but there’s a lot more to life than meets the eye. It’s a city that is simply a treasure!
Edinburgh
A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlets, and this theory describes the relationship between tourists and Edinburgh just as accurately. Almost everyone who visits the city can easily label it differently.
It is the ‘Athens of the North’ with its Parthenon and the ‘Black City’ with its Gothic architecture; it is the world’s first ‘Capital of World Literature’ to be stamped by UNESCO. It was the first city in the world to be stamped by UNESCO as the “literary capital of the world”, yet “notorious” for its “Trainspotting”; it produced Charles Darwin and David Hume, as well as detective novels and the world of magic; its women drank the strongest wine and its men wore the most beautiful dresses; the cold sea breeze could not stop its beauty, and the bad times It can’t be stopped from partying all day long ……
Edinburgh is unique in the world for being so refined as to be hardcore.
Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous Scottish brainiac and author of the massive treasure-hunting adventure Treasure Island, once said of his native Edinburgh: “People love her for many reasons, but none of them is really satisfying. She is, in short, a wonder.”
Even the countryside is full of art
What do you think of when you think of an English manor house? Aristocratic vintage architecture, elaborate and stunning gardens, or the elegant sight of aristocrats eating their tea?
As one of the first Chinese media invited to visit, the One Direction editorial team was parachuted into a real British manor house. Here, the manor house is transformed into a huge pavilion, where all the artworks are gathered.
“Jupiter Artland
This is the kind of place that can turn a reader into a novelist.
In ‘My Creative Experience’, Mr Lao She once mentioned his early experience of living and studying in England.
“At the age of twenty-seven, I went to England. If I had remained in China, I would not have become a novelist – though a hundred and twentieth class novelist. When I arrived in England, I read the novel desperately, using it as a textbook for my English studies. After reading some of it, my hands got itchy.”
Whether in London, the ‘inspiration of English literature’, or Edinburgh, the ‘literary capital of the world’, everyone who loves to read will find an unprecedented pleasure in the UK.
For those with a reading habit, the most exciting companion is always the book, because every good book seems to tease you and clamour to come home with you, but like every abusive relationship, the most painful is also the book, because book lovers don’t usually have a big house (for crying out loud) and you don’t know where to put all those books.
That’s why that Borges quote became so famous, and almost every bookshop has to use it – heaven should look like a library. This overused slogan has become the ultimate dream of almost all book lovers. The meaning behind it is not only envy of the abundance of books in the library, but also of having a place big enough and spacious enough to read books for free.
When our editorial team was granted access to the British Library, we were surprised to discover that Borges’ dream was not just a pipe dream, but that it had been “tragically” realised in the former British Empire!
“The British Library
You’ll be closer to paradise than ever before
How crazy are the British for books? Not only do they want to hide all their books in their biggest and most expensive public building (the British Library), they want to use their most prestigious and influential broadcaster to create a book programme that will fascinate bookworms around the world – World Book Club.
Until now, you may have been left to draw circles in pencil and hide your questions under a bookmark, but now you can turn on World Book Club and be the first to know what’s going on in the minds of the world’s most talked about authors.
“BBC
The UK is also the place where the miracle of the physical bookshop industry takes place. Whether you’re a small-town independent or a capital-infused bookstore chain in London or Edinburgh, you’ll always find customers here.
With the hope that One Direction will one day open a branch in the UK, we visited eight distinctive bookshops in the UK, some of which have already become popular destinations for Chinese readers, while others still need to be discovered.
An ‘in-depth review of UK bookshops’ for book lovers
So the question is: How do you react when you walk into a bookshop and see your favourite book? Do you get your heart racing like we do, unable to contain your excitement, ready to dash to the checkout counter and silently pull out the QR code to pay ……
Do you want to see the best magazines we’ve found in UK bookshops? Which one appeals to you the most?
Read a ‘beautiful magazine’
Experience a heart-racing experience
For a moment I realised what I loved about Britain – in fact, all of it, every bit of it, for better or worse – the old churches, the country lanes, the British mantra of “No whining! ” and “I’m very sorry, but”; the apologies I get for accidentally bumping my arm into someone; the milk in glass bottles, the beans on toast, the haystacks in June, the seaside piers, the Ordnance Survey maps, the tea and scones, the summer rainstorms and the smoky winter dusk — every bit, every drop.
What an amazing place it is – crazy to the core and certainly lovely to the core.
What other country could contribute William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Raine, Windsor Great Park, Salisbury Cathedral, double-decker buses, and chocolate digestives to us? Where else can I see this view in front of me? Only here, of course.
All of this came flooding back to me in an instant. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love it here, and the joy is overwhelming. Then I turned back to the car, knowing without a doubt that I would be back.
–Bill Bryson, Notes from Little Britain
So let’s go to Britain, where we can imagine all the wonderful things we want to do in “faraway places”!
Last but not least, we would like to thank Visit Britain for their full support of our trip to the UK, and British Airways for providing us with the transportation and service throughout the trip.
We would also like to recommend to everyone planning a trip to the UK: visit Visit Britain’s website for the most comprehensive information on destinations to help you plan your trip, and British Airways for their attentive service and comfortable experience.
