The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing

London Bridge in America

A brilliantly entertaining look at just what happened when London Bridge was sold and shipped to America.

As much a social history as the story of the bridge, this entertaining book is packed with facts but its light, sprightly tone makes bricks and mortar a source of human interest.

[Elborough] is a charming, wry companion, who wears his considerable learning lightly.

Wonderfully detailed… A fitting testament to the folly and wonder of human endeavour.

Elborough’s book is a fascinating mix of social and architectural history, travelogue and pop culture, but it is his ability to bring to life the disparate and often eccentric characters involved in the story that stands out.

An entertaining cultural historian of the Bill Bryson school…very interesting, and crammed with historical trivia.

A style perfectly poised between the flourishes of fiction and simple matters of fact… On the evidence of London Bridge in America, it would probably be justifiable now to proclaim Elborough one of Britain’s finest pop cultural historians.

Travis Elborough tells this glorious story with warmth and humour and a great wide-open spirit… Delightful.

Civil engineering has never been so much fun.

Elborough tells this whole strange story well, populating it with a cast of oddballs, cheats and chancers.

The book is an elegant structure, its joins hidden.

As a chronicle of social and architectural history, this is an informative and fun read

In 1968 the world’s largest antique went to America. 
 
But how do you transport a 130-year-old bridge 3,000 miles? 
 
And why did Robert P. McCulloch, a multimillionaire oil baron and chainsaw-manufacturing king, buy it? 
 
Why did he ship it to a waterless patch of the Arizonan desert? 
 
Did he even get the right bridge? 
 
To answer these questions, it’s necessary to meet a peculiar cast. 
 
Fleet Street shysters · Revolutionary Radicals · Frock-coated industrialists · Disneyland designers · Thames dockers · Guinness Book of Records officials · The odd Lord Mayor · Bridge-building priests · Gun-toting U.S. sheriffs · An Apache Indian or two 
 
And a fraudster whose greatest trick was to convince the world he ever existed 
 
Roll up, then, for the story of one of the strangest events in Anglo-American relations. Curious, clever and sharp, this is history to delight in.

Travis Elborough

This is a fascinating, informative, revelatory book … The vast array of knowledge that Elborough disperses in this book will make you look at parks differently … Parks seem an immutable, strangely paradisiacal element of our fraught and complicated urban lives, but the fact that we actually have them, as Elborough demonstrates in this wonderful book is something to be marvelled at.

Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact…from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative…  Alluring detail fills every page.

Amiable new history of the public park… Turns up lots of interesting, joyful stuff… A Walk in the Park is an enjoyable stroll.

His writing combines subtle drollery with a fantastical, Monty Python-ish strain… We can count this captivating book among the boons they [parks] have granted us.

Charming blend of the patriotic, popular and whimsical… Beautifully written.

Breezy but fact-filled prose… A worthy paean to the importance of parks to British life. His book is impassioned, informative.

Travis is a joyful cultural celebrant offering tantalizing nuggets of social history.

Quirky, lively history, full of unexpected detail.

Amiable new history of the public park… He turns up lots of interesting, joyful stuff along the way. He’s particularly good on our forebears’ taste for the ersatz… A Walk in the Park is an enjoyable stroll.

Fast-paced and richly peopled… Ebullient and enamored of his heroes is Elborough.

Elborough's quietly effervescent style manages to transform the reader from being someone with a passing interest in whatever topic he happens to be writing about into a fully-fledged Routemaster/LP/London loon.

Elborough writes in an aptly meandering style with an appetite for the eccentric marginalia of history

[A Walk in the Park is] wittily written and wide-ranging.

The Life and Times of a People's Institution

'A fascinating, informative, revelatory book' William Boyd, Guardian 
 
Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life, you might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there. In fact, public parks are an invention. From their medieval inception as private hunting grounds through to their modern incarnation as public spaces of rest and relaxation, parks have been fought over by land-grabbing monarchs, reforming Victorian industrialists, hippies, punks, and somewhere along the way, the common folk trying to savour their single day of rest. 
 
In A Walk in the Park, Travis Elborough excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. Loving, funny and impassioned, this is a timely celebration of a small wonder that – in an age of swingeing cuts – we should not take for granted.

Travis Elborough

Praise for A Walk in the Park

This is a fascinating, informative, revelatory book … The vast array of knowledge that Elborough disperses in this book will make you look at parks differently … Parks seem an immutable, strangely paradisiacal eleme ...

Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact…from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative… Alluring detail fills every p ...

Amiable new history of the public park… Turns up lots of interesting, joyful stuff… A Walk in the Park is an enjoyable stroll.

This is a fascinating, informative, revelatory book … The vast array of knowledge that Elborough disperses in this book will make you look at parks differently … Parks seem an immutable, strangely paradisiacal eleme ...

Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact…from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative… Alluring detail fills every p ...

Amiable new history of the public park… Turns up lots of interesting, joyful stuff… A Walk in the Park is an enjoyable stroll.

This is a fascinating, informative, revelatory book … The vast array of knowledge that Elborough disperses in this book will make you look at parks differently … Parks seem an immutable, strangely paradisiacal eleme ...

Travis Elborough is becoming a latter-day Alan Bennett. Let loose in an array of reference libraries, he summons many a curious fact…from the shelves, which makes for a rich narrative… Alluring detail fills every p ...

Amiable new history of the public park… Turns up lots of interesting, joyful stuff… A Walk in the Park is an enjoyable stroll.

Books by Travis Elborough

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