Mail Obsession: A Journey Round Britain by Postcode by Mark Mason

by Mark Mason

Each of the United Kingdom's 124 post codes has a story to tell, an unexpected nugget to dust off and NG (Nottingham): Batman's home city of Gotham is named after a Nottinghamshire village; NR (Norwich): some of the earliest human footprints are preserved on a beach in Norfolk; AB (Aberdeen): the left leg of Scottish hero William Wallace is buried in St Machar's Cathedral; CR (Croydon): the name Croydon means "valley of the crocuses;" DN (Doncaster): Michael Jackson's "Thriller" was written by a Cleethorpes man called Rodney. Mark Mason has set off on a mission to visit every single postcode, immersing himself in local folklore on a roundabout journey from AB to ZE. Along the way are unusual place names—ever stayed in Pity Me, or stopped off in No Place?—curious monuments and ghoulish tales of strange burials, from the sarcophagus of a mummified duke to the four different resting places of William Wallace. He encounters German spies, cross-dressing criminals, and the only wild cows in Britain, visits the UK's smallest church, and enjoys a pint in its tiniest pub. His travels also provide the perfect opportunity to delve into the history of the Royal Mail and learn about pillar boxes, posties, and Penny Reds—plus Oscar Wilde's unconventional method of posting a letter. A playful mix of fact, anecdote and personal observation, Mail Obsession pays homage to the rich and eccentric history of Britain, with each of its post codes as a piece of the puzzle.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, History, British Literature

Paperback

First published December 1, 2015

About the author

Mark Mason's previous non-fiction includes The Importance of Being Trivial, Walk the Lines, The Bluffer's Guide To Football and The Bluffer's Guide To Bond. He is also the author of three novels, and has written for most British national newspapers (though never about anything too heavy), and magazines from The Spectator to Four Four Two. He lives in Sussex with his partner and son.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every time you post a letter or card it is routed to the final address by a little seven digit postcode. Matt Mason has decided that he will visit each and every one of these postcode areas and endeavour to extract an anecdote or fact about that place as he travels from AB to ZE. But it will also be a journey back in time as he looks at the history of the postal service in the UK and discovers more of the strange world of the philatelist and pays a visit to the underground mail train.

On his journey he meets the great and the good, the famous and infamous, visits the smallest church, enjoys a pint in the smallest pub in Britain, goes to No Place and Pity Me, discovers that there is a village called Letter and that bits of William Wallace are interred in four different locations. Each postcode is celebrated with a single fact, like where the dartboard was invented or that there is only one hotel suite in the world with its own postcode. He does draw out much more from the people and places as he passes swiftly through.

Mason seems to delight in finding unusual ways of looking at Britain and mining our rich history for a subject and a story. Whilst the history of the postal service has been written about many times before, I quite liked the way he looks at each two letter coded area and bring alive the story from there. This is reasonable book that is written in a chatty style, amusing at times as well as being fascinating. What you don’t get though is a huge amount of depth to the stories; to get round all 124 postal codes means that he cannot fully absorb the character of the places visited. That isn’t a bad thing, as it is still an enjoyable read, but I thought that his book Walk the Lines was much better.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoyed the author's travels around the 124 postcode areas of the UK with some humour and quirky facts

[Alex Sarll]

"I've been wondering if there's a difference between 'the Post Office', 'the GPO' and 'the Royal Mail' - Vicky explains that they've always been used pretty much interchangeably." Well, maybe to some extent they have, but it took me a minute on Google to confirm that they're distinct legal entities, one disbanded. I could forgive the bathetic personal observations on the trip through Britain's postcode areas that isn't even completed, if the facts were solid. But what's the point of a light-hearted trivia volume in which the reader needs to second-check the trivia?
(That's by no means the only example, but I saved the others (or at least the others I happened to spot) for my proper review - possibly coming to a paper in your postcode area soon. Ish)

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best way to describe this book is that it is odd.

Mark Mason looked at Britain's 124 postcodes and decided to visit as many as possible and relay interesting facts about them.

For me the most interesting fact was learning how the postcodes work. This year in London I stayed in a hotel next door to the one I'd stayed in last year. They had different postcodes. I discovered that the first half of the code is the area, the second the property. So quite literally every building in Britain has a different postcode!

Some of the facts were odd, some amusing, some triggered WTF moments.

If you like travel and trivia, this book is for you.

Highly recommended.

[Owen McArdle · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable book, but a bit disappointing that it was only half travelogue to find facts from each postcode area, with the other half of the areas' facts being dropped in pretty randomly

[Lee Penney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book where the author travels around the postcodes of the UK and presents a fact about each of them.

That’s probably simplifying it slightly as it’s crammed with facts in between each. You can tell Mason struggled to keep it to one per postcode and so exposes a bunch like he has fact Tourette’s and couldn’t keep them in.

I think the quote on the back cover from Reader’s Digest sums my reading of this book up really well:

Almost every page contains at least one thing that you’ll be itching to startle your friends with.

It’s a wonderful book about Mason’s travels around the UK, with little observations, snippets of overheard conversations and side notes aplenty. It’s entertaining throughout and you’ll definitely learn something new.

One thing I would criticise is that he doesn’t visit every postcode, which feels a bit of a cop-out and that the author was either in a hurry or lazy (which seems unlikely given the exploits documented).

The other thing I found a bit odd was the chosen fact in a number of instances. You have the whole history of a postcode, each of which the book clearly illustrates are packed with stories, and then you end up with things like:

LU (Luton): Nick Owen was once refused entry to the Nick Owen Lounge at Luton Town FC’s ground.

Comical, yes, but the best fact for the entire of Luton? I’d hope not.

That said, the book does highlight just how much has gone on in any area of the UK you chose to examine closely. Life is literally busting out at the seams.

If you love a fact, the more obscure the better, then this is a great read.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good title – a pun, presumably – for a book in which the author describes the bee in his bonnet that told him to visit every post code area in the British Isles and find a really interesting fact about each one. In the end, he does not manage actually to visit each one, but he does deliver an interesting fact about each, in fact often many interesting facts before revealing the one that came out tops for him.

Mason’s delivery also reads from time to engaging time like a version of Paul Sinha’s Pub Quiz. I found it entertaining.

Not much point detailing too much about the content of ‘Mail Obsession’ because that would spoil the fun, but a few tasters might excite the appetite. I learned a lot about how postcodes are organised; I learned a lot about the arcane wonders to be found in the British Postal Museum and Archive in Phoenix Place in London; I learned a lot about how to travel to the most northerly house in the UK, about horseshoes in Oakham, about a significant event on the Bath Road near Aldermaston in November 1919, and the one-up-manship Halifax can display when set against Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. And so on and so forth.

This is a very jolly book, though it’s a source of regret to me that I can never remember, and never locate in Mr Mason’s text, the list of cities in the UK that are blessed with single letter first elements in their postcodes. I know M for Manchester and G for Glasgow. I just struggle after that.

I have ‘Walk the Lines’ ready for when I want a good time.

[Raj · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book sort of falls between two stools for me. It tries to be a travel book crossed with a trivia book, and doesn't entirely succeed at either for me. It sort of felt like the author was trying to outdo Bill Bryson, and, friends, he is no Bill Bryson. Notes From a Small Island did the tour round Britain so much better, and even when Bryson didn't like a place, it never felt like he was looking down his nose at it, the way Mason does about Belfast, Swansea or Southall.

Because I never entirely liked the authorial voice, I didn't get on with the book. The facts are fun and all, but they're pretty random, and while I'd hoped that the Royal Mail might act as as central theme, it didn't really feature that much.

A bit disappointing, and, I suspect, a book that will find its way off my bookshelves, the next time they need clearing out a bit.

[Ellesse · Rating 1 out of 5]

I will be honest this isn't a review of the full book because I made it to page 26 before I'd had enough.

So I had a few issues with this book before I took it back to the library for another poor soul to read. On the very first page the author feels the need to point out at YES IT WAS MEN not women that laid the first rail tracks. Seems pointless unless you are trying to annoy women but okay. Moving on. There was a full page with someone else poems in it, why?

I got passed those though, I kept going. Until page 26. Then I had enough when I read this...

"A service station is a cross between a desert island and big brother house, though thankfully filled with ordinary people rather than transsexuals yearning to be pop starts"

How is that even acceptable in this age? It's not. I'm not reading a book from an author with that attitude.

I want a book by Harry the communication manager of the BMPA not by this guy.

[Helen Hagon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly entertaining book crammed with all kinds of fascinating trivia about Britain. I found it a little confusing at first, where the facts seemed to be quite random, but then the author set off on his various fact-finding expeditions and I was hooked. My only complaint is that I would have loved some photos. I found myself googling all sorts of things just to see what they look like: the Uxbridge gasholder, or the Scottish Royal Mail logo, for example.
I'm not sure whether this would appeal to readers unfamiliar with Britain and its postcode system, but for me it was a fascinating journey and I know many things about my country now that I didn't know before.

[Theediscerning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm.... The author proves to be pretty good at some travel writing, when his format here lets him, and not too bad at the trivia – although very much at odds with many other books as regards the invention of the windscreen wiper. It's just the book, that demands he pop into some places, walk here and there a bit but generally give us one trivia factoid relevant to every postcode area in the UK, doesn't live up to its premises all that well. The travel is sporadic, the trivia itself certainly doesn't match the expectations of it he himself lays out early on, and the whole feels, suitably perhaps, trivial.

[Sarahjoy Maddeaux · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was indeed full of fascinating facts about Britain. All sorts of things I wanted to turn to someone and share. And it's readable, but... it's not as good as, say, Bill Bryson or Dixe Wills. Somehow the writing seems more laboured. It's interesting but not delightful. Also he kind of cheats by smuggling in more than one truth about most post code areas, trying to get away with it by adding, 'I could make this fact *the* fact for this area, but instead...' Of course that means more fascinating information, but, well, cheating.

[Rob Sedgwick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book didn't really work entirely for me. It's amusing in places and contains interesting facts and anecdotes (which I will all soon forget, I expect). However, it might as well just be a list of facts. Mark's haphazard journey around the country doesn't really add that much. (It adds something for sure, but it doesn't make the book, and the book could exist without it). Too much of it is seen outside a car window, I did enjoy some of the bits when he actually had his two feet on the ground and interacted with other people.

[Adarsh Mishra · Rating 2 out of 5]

its an odd trivia book about the UK Post codes. My key problem with the book- the writing style aside, even the trivia nuggets aren't interesting at parity! Yes there are a number of "Really! I couldn't have known that!" moments, but then as pointed by a few other readers- there are a bunch of "Really! that surely isn't true" bits as well.

[Troy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ok, 130 postcodes in Great Britain, let’s find a fact from each one.

There’s some interesting tidbits in here, but it’s mostly like reading a script of QI, without the funny ad-libbing.

It seemed a pointless read about a pointless exercise. My suggestion is to read any Bill Bryson book for a far more engaging experience.

1 star.

[Lcitera · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful book that is a treasure trove of UK trivia...categorized by postal codes. Also useful facts such as why the mail delivery in the UK is identified as "the post". Written with humor...a good read.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pointless trivia and a bit of travel makes another entertaining Mark Mason book. If you liked his other books you’ll like this one. If you haven’t tried one they’re lighthearted fun. Where else will you find out that the man who invented bank holidays taught his dog, who liked tea, to read?

[Emily Sherwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally interesting, but I think he could have picked some better facts. Also I felt that the author was very snobby and had a weird fascination/tendency to specify people’s race that weren’t white.

[Grand Nerd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book just spoils you with interesting pieces of trivia on every page. It can occasionally spend a bit too much time on the author, but it saves itself with an absolute clinker of a fact that you must instantly annoy the folk near you with. Terrific

[Louise · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed as I thought there would be more about the history of the postcodes. But some of the facts were fun even if they did tail off near the end .... as if the author himself got bored of the premise.

[Jane Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately entertaining little book about a project to visit and find a little-known fact about each of the 124 postal districts in the country.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting

[Denise hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great zigzag journey across the UK. .

Full of great "well I never moments" . Written with great humour and you picture the journeys on your imaginary map

[Judy Rogers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easy and interesting read

An enjoyable trip around the UK written in a friendly style, entertaining and informative. Learned a lot of interesting facts along the way.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun facts aplenty from start to finish. My reservations are the slight undertones that make it evidently written by a middle class, middle aged white man.

[Max Baldwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed by this as the authors other two books I have read were both really good. The trivia in this one is just a bit boring and the authors disposition throughout the book isn’t to my liking

[Jonny Brick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun way to tour Britain, with nuggets and charm aplenty. A mix of social history and travelogue, and a worthy part of Mark's excellent canon of books.

[Misa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Ipswichblade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and easy to read, but not all postcode areas were visited and there didn’t seem any logic to how the author chose which to leave out

[Peter Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well it was definitely more trivia than geeky; so disappointed. Some of the facts were not really correct - eg Royal Mail = Post Office.