Bill Bryson

Born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, William McGuire "Bill" Bryson, OBE, FRS settled in England in 1977 and worked as a journalist until he became a full-time writer. He spent many years living in North Yorkshire with his English wife and four children. He and his family moved to New Hampshire in America for a couple of years, but they have now returned to live in the UK. Bill Brysons, the hilarious first travel book in The Lost Continent, chronicle... d a trip around the small town of America in his mothers Chevy. It was followed by an account of his first trip around Europe, Neither Here Nor There. Other travel books include the massive bestseller Notes From a Small Island, who won the 2003 World Book Day National Poll to find the book that best represented modern England, followed by A Walk in the Woods (in which Stephen Katz, his travel companion from Neither Here Nor There, made a welcome reappearance), Notes From a Big Country and Down Under. He turned his attention to science in his final book. With critical acclaim, A Short History of Nearly Everything was lauded and became a huge bestseller. Before winning the Aventis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communication Prize, it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. His next book, The Thunderbolt Kid's Life and Times, is a memoir of America's growth in the 1950s, featuring another appearance by his old friend Stephen Katz. October 8 sees the release of Nearly Everything's Really Short History.READ MORE