Bill Bryson's bestselling travel books includeThe Lost ContinentandNotes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. Another travel book,A Walk in the Woods,has become a major film starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. His new number one Sunday Times bestseller isThe Road to Little Dribbling.
His acclaimed book on the history of science,A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Society's Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award, and is the biggest selling popular science book of the 21st century. Bryson has also written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoirThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
Bill Bryson was born in the American Mid-West, and now lives in the UK. A former Chancellor of Durham University, he was President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England for five years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.