At Home

In At Home, Bill Bryson walks through the Victorian rectory in Norfolk where he lives, one room at a time, and lets each room lead him away from the house and into the history of everyday life.

The kitchen opens onto the history of food and cooking, the cellar onto building and engineering, the attic onto pests and the people who worked in other people's houses.

The book opens with the 1851 Great Exhibition and the Crystal Palace, and across twenty chapters it follows the inventions, fashions, fortunes and accidents that decided what we sleep on, eat from and wash with.

Bryson is after the odd, specific story rather than a tidy argument: who first put a fork on a table, why salt and pepper became the pair they are, what wealthy Victorians did with their servants and their money.

It is a long, digressive book written with his usual dry humour, and reviewers have noted that it is more a collection of entertaining historical stories than a study of the home itself. Readers who enjoy popular social history with plenty of jokes and side roads will find a lot to like.