Why would you be ashamed -- I loved those books. Nice, gentle stories. I still re-read the copy of Wind in the Willows I got when I was 7
Well, I suppose, because they are not very intellectual. But he was a natural-born story teller and I really respect that gift - lost in all modern novels, it seems.
My favorite Anglophile book is “Lark Rise to Candleford” - the story of Flora Thomson’s childhood in rural Oxford during the 1880s. An unbelieveably beautiful book.