He enlists the companionship of a long-lost friend with whom he'd proven incompatible on a previous travel experience. Instead, she's unceremoniously ditched (in real life as well as print) by the man who couldn't stomach the thought of going alone. True, some of his encounters sound less than thrilling, but even the obnoxious woman he encounters should get credit for tackling the trail by herself. A common motif is how everyone one is but a weekend hiker, that he is a true back-to-nature type in comparison. He's smug and superior, and spends most of the book complaining about his companions on the trail. Bryson sounds, to put it mildly, a real jerk. I'm halfway through, and - like the author on the daunting trail - am unsure as to whether or not I can finish my task. Years of declining the advice of the Bryson-worshipers, it seems, was not in vain. It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I thought I'd spent the last of my holiday indulging in a witty travelogue to set my feet itching. October 8 sees the publication of A Really Short History of Nearly Everything. His next book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, is a memoir of growing up in 1950s America, featuring another appearance from his old friend Stephen Katz. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, before going on to win the Aventis Prize for Science Books and the Descartes Science Communication Prize. A Short History of Nearly Everything was lauded with critical acclaim, and became a huge bestseller. In his last book, he turned his attention to science. Other travel books include the massive bestseller Notes From a Small Island, which won the 2003 World Book Day National Poll to find the book which 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.īill Bryson has also written several highly praised books on the English language, including Mother Tongue and Made in America. It was followed by Neither Here Nor There, an account of his first trip around Europe. In The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's hilarious first travel book, he chronicled a trip in his mother's Chevy around small town America.

He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire.

He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer.

William McGuire 'Bill' Bryson, OBE, FRS was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951.

A walk through the woods bill bryson