Fat Man on a Roman Road

by Tom Vernon

Genres: Travel

304 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 1983

About the author

Tom Vernon is a British broadcaster and writer, best known as the titular "Fat Man" of a number of popular travelogues. After several years working as a presenter and interviewer for BBC Radio 4, Vernon's first travelogue series was Fat Man On A Bicycle (1979). As the title implied, Vernon was obese and the first episode followed the health tests he had to undergo before setting off on his journey, which took him from Muswell Hill to the Mediterranean coast of southern France. He would repeat this journey fifteen years later for the TV series, Fat Man in France (1994).

Fat Man at Work (1983) and his first television series, Fat Man in the Kitchen (1985-6), deviated from the travelogue style of the other series. The former featured Vernon talking to people working in factories, while the latter was a cookery programme filmed in his own kitchen in Muswell Hill in which each edition was devoted to cuisine of a different country.

Reviews

[Mark]

Apparently this Tom Vernon is some kind of distant cousin, all the Vernons of England being traceable to one guy, who came with William the Bastard (aka, William I) in the Norman invasion and was granted a fiefdom in return- my maternal family line proceeds from that point anyway.
The book is quite well written and takes the Roman roads that run northeast out of Exeter to Lincoln, and then, bend northwest again toward Edinburgh. Mr. Vernon deals kindly with the men and women he meets along the way and generally finds something interesting of note in just about every municipality he passes through. Like his colleague Mr. Enfield he manages to deal with irritations rather well (although Enfield gets a bit more emotional about them) which include- having to pass his bicycle beneath a number of gates, at one point, with the pannier still on - as well as his girthy self. He's assisted in this journey with relief points offered by his wife, who shows up in just the right moment with the car and a picnic lunch, if necessary. Especially noteworthy are his prospecting of Hadrian's Wall and the Scots piper he meets just across the borderline. This is a good bike-touring memoir.

[Darla Ebert]

The author is fun and funny, it was just not a very interesting read. There was not enough substance for me. I think part of the problem is the cultural difference between an American's concept of humor and that of the Englishman. No judgment, just different avenues of approach toward what is funny for one culture up against another concept of what is giggle-inducing for another (culture).

[Mark]

I read this when it first came out. It still has some humour but much of it doesn't transfer so well to the present. The language seemed deliberately wordy and flowery with references to classics that we are all meant to understand but simply served to say, "I'm better than you because I know this stuff", and this put me off as a reader.

[Kate]

"Tom Vernon wanted to look at Britain and to meet the British. What better waty of doing so than along the straight Roman roads at the measured pace of a 19-stone cyclist? Starting at Topsham in Devon, he pedalled north-east in a diagonal line through the Midlands and into Scotland, finishing at Musselburgh.

"This 600-mile journey, the subject of the BBC Raio 4 series, was tackled with the author's characteristic good humour and curiosity. Among his memorable encounters were a tea-room trio in Bath, a man who saw the ghosts of the Ninth Legion, and many more. Combined with his extraordinary gift of evoking the changes in landscape, the result is a funny, chatty, critical and quirky -- but always entertaining -- moving picture of a people and their country."
~~back cover

I should have loved this book. Why didn't I? I think because I'm not British. And therefore I'm not familiar with the smaller towns & villages, making his comments cryptic as far as I was concerned. I tired -- I stuck with this book as long as I could. But when I realized that I was having to force myself to pick it up & read it, I knew it was time to abandon it. And so I did.

[Max Robberts]

Fascinating to look not only at the Roman history of a slice of Britain but also early 1980s Britain through the eyes of a shrewd observer.

[Erica]

Funny biking travelogue through Great Britain.