Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He is the author of eighteen books and holds the record of having the most bestsellers of any author on the Sunday Times bestseller list in the last fifty years. A Short History of Nearly Everything, first published in 2003, spent 106 weeks in the chart, won both the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize and is the biggest-selling popular science book of the twenty-first century. 
 
Bill Bryson is a former Chancellor of Durham University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society. He lives in England.

Bill Bryson

Andrew Bryson is a radio journalist working in the BBC's Business and Economic Unit. He frequently works as a producer on Radio 4's Today programme and on Radio 5 Live.

Andrew Bryson

Bill Laws

Bill Dare

Bill Tidy

Frank Bill

Bill Lyons

Bill Wasik

Bill Clegg is the author of the bestselling memoirs Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man and Ninety Days. His first novel, Did You Ever Have a Family, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

Bill Clegg

Bill Jones

Bill Edgar

Bill Walsh

Bill Lucas

Bill Vidal

Bill Breen

Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he co-founded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen and today he is chair of the Gates Foundation. Bill is the founder of Breakthrough Energy, an effort to commercialize clean energy and other climate-related technologies, and TerraPower, a company investing in developing groundbreaking nuclear technologies. He has three children.

Bill Gates

Bill Mason

Bill Adams

Bill Murphy

Bill Morris

Bill Emmott

Bill Manley

Bill Gurley is a general partner at Benchmark, a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Born in 1966 in Dickinson, Texas, Gurley earned a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Florida and later received an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to his career in venture capital, Bill spent four years in investment banking.

Bill Gurley

Bill Jensen

Bill Leckie

Bill Duncan

Bill Conaty

Bill Buford has been a writer and editor for the New Yorker since 1995. Before that he was the editor of Granta magazine for sixteen years and, in 1989, became the publisher of Granta Books. He is also the author of Heat and Among the Thugs. He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, grew up in California, and was educated at UC Berkeley and Kings College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for his work on Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jessica Green, and their two sons.

Bill Buford

Ian Billings

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An anthology of BBC Radio documentaries featuring the bestselling author 
 
Bill Bryson is the world's funniest travel writer, and a master of comic observation. His hugely popular books, spanning topics from linguistics to Shakespeare to the human body, have sold over 16 million copies and been translated into 30 languages, and his 2003 science book A Short History of Nearly Everything won the prestigious Aventis and Descartes prizes. 
 
This sparkling collection features seven BBC Radio programmes that collectively illuminate his personal passions. In The Art of Travel, he talks to Annette Kobak about his memorable journeys around the USA; while in the 6-part series Divided by a Common Language, he scours American history in an attempt to find out why Americans talk and behave differently from British people. Journeys in English, based on his acclaimed book Mother Tongue, sees him romping through the history of Britain in six episodes, to reveal how English became the complex yet world-beating language it is today. 
 
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park finds Bill heading out across the royal park in the company of Clare Balding, as he discusses his love for walking and exploring. As a castaway on Desert Island Discs, he shares the soundtrack of his life with Sue Lawley; and in With Great Pleasure, he selects some of his favourite writing, including Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, a Hardy Boys classic and Three Men in a Boat. Finally, in Bookclub, he chats to James Naughtie and an audience of readers about A Short History of Nearly Everything. 
 
Contents 
 
The Art of Travel: Bill Bryson 
Divided by a Common Language 
Journeys in English 
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park with Bill Bryson 
Desert Island Discs: Bill Bryson 
With Great Pleasure: Bill Bryson 
Bookclub: Bill Bryson 
 
Production credits 
 
The Art of Travel: Bill Bryson 
Presented by Annette Kobak 
Produced by Kate McAII 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 27 January 1991 
 
Divided by a Common Language 
Presented by Bill Bryson 
Produced by Brian King 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 29 July-2 September 1995 
 
Journeys in English 
Written and presented by Bill Bryson 
Produced by Brian King 
 
First broadcast as Mother Tongue on BBC Radio 4, 13 December 1997-17 January 1998 
 
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park with Bill Bryson 
Presented by Clare Balding 
Produced by Lucy Lunt 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2015 
 
Desert Island Discs: Bill Bryson 
Presented by Sue Lawley 
Produced by Angie Nehring 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 31 January 1999 
 
With Great Pleasure: Bill Bryson 
Readers: Kerry Shale and Bill Wallis 
Produced by Mary Ward-Lowery 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 30 September 1999 
 
Bookclub: Bill Bryson 
Presented by James Naughtie 
Produced by Dymphna Flynn 
 
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 6 February 2005 
 
©2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

The Bill Bryson BBC Radio Collection

Divided by a Common Language, Journeys in English and more

Bill Bryson goes to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. Kenya, generally regarded as the cradle of humankind, is a land of stunning landscapes, famous game reserves, and a vibrant culture, but it also has many serious problems, including refugees, AIDS, drought and grinding poverty. It also provides plenty to worry a nervous traveller like Bill Bryson: hair-raising rides in light aircraft, tropical diseases, snakes, insects and large predators. 
 
Bryson casts his inimitable eye on a continent new to him, and the resultant diary, though short in length, contains all his trademark laugh-out-loud wit, wry observation and curious insight. 
 
All the author’s royalties from this book, as well as all profits, will go to CARE International.

Bill Bryson's African Diary

From one of our most beloved and bestselling authors, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s. 
 
Born in 1951 in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24 carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generation, Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around the house wearing a jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel round his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing evildoers (in his head) as The Thunderbolt Kid. 
 
Using his childhood fantasy life as a springboard, Bill Bryson recreates the life of his family in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality. In a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars, Bill Bryson's days followed in reassuringly cosy succession, enlivened by modest triumphs and disasters. 
 
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Rise and Fall of the Thunderbolt Kid is a modern classic, full of Bill Bryson's inimitable, pitch-perfect observations. 
........................................................................................................................................... 
'Seriously funny' The Sunday Times 
 
'A funny, effortlessly readable, quietly enchanted memoir' Daily Mail 
 
'A wittily incisive book about innocence, and its limits, but in no sense an innocent book... Like Alan Bennett, another ironist posing as a sentimentalist, Bryson can play the teddy-bear and then deliver a sudden, grizzly-style swipe' Independent 
 
'Outlandishly and improbably entertaining... inevitably [I] would be reduced to body-racking, tear-inducing, de-couching laughter' New York Times 
 
'Characteristic mixture of bemused wit, acerbic astonishment and sweet benevolence... His evocation of an era is near perfect: tender, hilarious and true' The Times

The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid

Travels Through my Childhood

Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too apparent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved travel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. 
 
Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty but any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treasures of his childhood: the glories of a New England autumn; the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts; and motel rooms where you can generally count on being awakened in the night by a piercing shriek and the sound of a female voice pleading, 'Put the gun down, Vinnie, I'll do anything you say.' 
 
Whether discussing the strange appeal of breakfast pizza or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on that strangest of phenomena - the American way of life.

Notes From A Big Country

Journey into the American Dream

WINNER: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER READER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 
WINNER: BOOKS ARE MY BAG READER AWARD FOR BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY OR BIOGRAPHY 2016 
 
Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the bestselling travel book ever, and was also voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain.Now, to mark the twentieth anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey round Britain to see what has changed. 
 
Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, by way of places that many people never get to at all, Bryson sets out to rediscover the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognize any more. Yet, despite Britain’s occasional failings and more or less eternal bewilderments, Bill Bryson is still pleased to call our rainy island home. And not just because of the cream teas, a noble history, and an extra day off at Christmas. 
 
Once again, with his matchless homing instinct for the funniest and quirkiest, his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today.

The Road to Little Dribbling

More Notes from a Small Island

In the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack. 
 
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.

A Walk In The Woods

The World's Funniest Travel Writer Takes a Hike

‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to’ 
 
And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land. 
 
Bryson’s acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature – hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache – and the book that first staked Bill Bryson’s claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.

The Lost Continent

Travels in Small-Town America

What is the difference between cant and jargon, or assume and presume? What is a fandango? How do you spell supersede? Is it hippy or hippie? 
 
These questions really matter to Bill Bryson, as they do to anyone who cares about the English language. Originally published as The Penguin Dictionary for Writers and Editors, Bryson's Dictionary for Writers and Editors has now been completely revised and updated for the twenty-first century by Bill Bryson himself. Here is a very personal selection of spellings and usages, covering such head-scratchers as capitalization, plurals, abbreviations and foreign names and phrases. Bryson also gives us the difference between British and American usages, and miscellaneous pieces of essential information you never knew you needed, like the names of all the Oxford colleges, or the correct spelling of Brobdingnag. 
 
An indispensable companion to all those who write, work with the written word, or who just enjoy getting things right, it gives rulings that are both authoritative and commonsense, all in Bryson's own inimitably goodhumoured way.

Bryson's Dictionary: for Writers and Editors

‘Funny, wise, learned and compulsive’ - GQ 
 
 Bill Bryson turns away from travelling the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Notes from a Big Country, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. 
 
In Made in America, Bryson tells the story of how American arose out of the English language, and along the way, de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn’t won, why Americans say ‘lootenant’ and ‘Toosday’, how they were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up - as well as exposing the true origins of the words G-string, blockbuster, poker and snafu. 
 
‘A tremendously sassy work, full of zip, pizzazz and all those other great American qualities’ 
Will Self, Independent on Sunday

Made In America

An Informal History of American English

In At Home, Bill Bryson applies the same irrepressible curiosity, irresistible wit, stylish prose and masterful storytelling that made A Short History of Nearly Everything one of the most lauded books of the last decade, and delivers one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live. 
 
Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying the battles and wars of history than to considering what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. And that most of the key discoveries for humankind can be found in the very fabric of the houses in which we live.This inspired him to start a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room considering how the ordinary things in life came to be. 
 
Along the way he did a prodigious amount of research on the history of anything and everything, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the spice trade to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets; and on the brilliant, creative and often eccentric minds behind them. And he discovered that, although there may seem to be nothing as unremarkable as our domestic lives, there is a huge amount of history, interest and excitement - and even a little danger - lurking in the corners of every home.

At Home

A Short History of Private Life

Bill Bryson’s first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before. 
 
Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

Neither Here, Nor There

Travels in Europe

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life – a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. 
 
Ignoring such dangers – and yet curiously obsessed by them – Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn’t get much better than this…

Down Under

Travels in a Sunburned Country

The ultimate eye-opening journey through time and space, A Short History of Nearly Everything is the biggest-selling popular science book of the 21st century and has sold over 2 million copies. 
 
 'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 
 'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times 
 
 Bill Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization - how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us. 
 
 Bill Bryson's challenge is to take subjects that normally bore the pants off most of us, like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and see if there isn't some way to render them comprehensible to people who have never thought they could be interested in science. As a result, A Short History of Nearly Everything reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

In 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite; a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy; place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey and Shellow Bowells; people who said 'Mustn't grumble', and ‘Ooh lovely’ at the sight of a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits; and Gardeners' Question Time. Notes from a Small Island was a huge number-one bestseller when it was first published, and has become the nation's most loved book about Britain, going on to sell over two million copies.

Notes From A Small Island

Journey Through Britain

In summer 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest), a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and an unknown aviator named Charles Lindbergh who became the most famous man on earth. 
 
It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of over-the-hill baseball player Babe Ruth, and an almost impossible amount more. 
 
In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a tale of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that make him Britain’s favourite writer of narrative non-fiction, he brings to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world.

One Summer

America 1927

'More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...' 
 
Only Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most-spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation, Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it as maddening to learn as it is flexible to use. 
 
Bill Bryson's classic Mother Tongue is a highly readable and hilarious tale of how English came to be the world's language.

Mother Tongue

The Story of the English Language

This highly entertaining BBC Radio 4 series is written and presented by Bill Bryson and based on his bestselling book, 'Mother Tongue'. In it he romps through the history of Britain to reveal how English became such an infuriatingly complex – but ultimately world-beating – language.  But why English? Why don’t we speak Gallic, or any other of the European languages? According to Bryson, it’s down to the remarkable ability for the English language to assimilate other vocabularies, to adapt and – above all – to survive.  From the old English words that are still in everyday use, such as ‘eat’, ‘drink’, ‘man’ and ‘wife’, to the current hybrid language of the 21st century with its many diverse dialects, Bryson, in his unique and ever-affable style, guides us through the development of English into a rich and expressive language.  Bryson explains how English has been shaped through invasion and conquest, as well as the rules that brought order to a disorderly language, the million and one ways to have fun with the English language, and the struggle with phrasal verbs (including the way things often get lost in the translation).  And finally, he contemplates the future of English. Does Estuary English really Rule OK?   '...Worth a listen for anyone who is interested in how we came to have such a rich language' - Sunday Times

Journeys In English

#1 Bestseller in both hardback and paperback: SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 ROYAL SOCIETY INSIGHT INVESTMENT SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 
_______ 
 
'A directory of wonders.' - The Guardian 
 
'Jaw-dropping.' - The Times 
 
'Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson...an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book.' - The Sunday Times 
 
'It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' - The Daily Telegraph 
_______ 
 
'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.' 
 
Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up. 
 
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. 
 
'What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson

The Body

A Guide for Occupants - THE SUNDAY TIMES NO.1 BESTSELLER

In this fully revised and updated edition of the best-selling popular science book of the 21st century, Bill Bryson makes complex subjects clear and compelling for everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
NOW FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED. 
 
'Possibly the best scientific primer ever published.' Economist 
 
'Truly impressive...It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science.' Guardian 
 
Bill Bryson can't contain his curiosity about the world around him. A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 is the result of his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization – how we got from being nothing at all to what we are today. Now fully updated to reflect the many scientific discoveries in the last twenty years since this book was first published, it explains among much else: 
<ul><li>why Pluto is no longer a planet</li><li>how the number of moons in the solar system has more than doubled in 20 years</li><li>how scientists used advances in genetics to discover previously unknown species of early humans</li><li>why we still don't know what most of the universe is made of</li><li>how the little Higgs boson transformed physics</li></ul>This journey through time and space will inform a new generation of readers, young and old, as well as those who read this book on first publication with a new perspective based on what we know now. 
 
Written in his inimitable style, Bryson makes complex subjects fascinating and accessible to everyone with an interest in the world around them. 
 
A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 reveals the world in a whole new way. 
 
Praise for A Short History of Nearly Everything: 
 
‘I doubt that a better book for the layman about the findings of modern science has been written.’ Sunday Telegraph 
 
‘Bill Bryson has an unmatched gift for explaining the most difficult subjects in the clearest possible way.’ Mail on Sunday 
 
'A travelogue of science, with a witty, engaging, and well-informed guide' The Times 
 
‘Hugely readable and never obfuscating.’ Sunday Times 
 
‘A genuinely useful and readable book... A thoroughly enjoyable, as well as educational, experience. Nobody who reads it will ever look at the world around them in the same way again’ Daily Express 
 
‘The very book I have been looking for most of my life... Bryson wears his knowledge with aplomb and a lot of very good jokes.’ Daily Mail 
 
‘Destined to become a modern classic of science writing’ The New York Times

A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0

Number One Bestseller in both hardback and paperback 
The Sunday Times Book of the Year 
The ideal gift for everybody 
 
'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.' 
 
Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts, astonishing stories and now fully illustrated for the first time, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up. 
 
A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. The ideal gift for readers of every age who wish to discover more about themselves. 
 
'What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson

The Body Illustrated

A Guide for Occupants

In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America. 
 
From the Deep South to the Wild West, from Elvis' birthplace through to Custer's Last Stand, Bryson 
visits places he re-named Dullard, Coma, and Doldrum (so the residents don't sue or come after him with baseball bats). But his hopes of finding the American dream end in a nightmare of greed, ignorance, and pollution. This is a wickedly witty and savagely funny assessment of a country lost to itself, and to him. 
 
Travel through small-town America with Kerry Shale's popular BBC Radio 4 reading of Bill Bryson's comic travelogue.

We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. 
 
Want to know why the skin is the biggest organ? 
 
Why our brains can see into the future? 
 
Or why your eyes are back to front? 
 
Packed full of facts, big numbers (such as the amount of microbes that make you) and small numbers (the size of those very tiny microbes) all in full-colour. 
 
This non-fiction book, packed with wonder from the globally bestselling Bill Bryson is a head-to-toe tour of the most amazing thing about you - YOUR BODY!

A Really Short Journey Through the Body

An illustrated edition of the bestselling book about our incredible anatomy

Every day, you do something incredible, and I bet you barely ever think about it: you speak. 
 
Ever wondered why the English language turned out how it did? 
 
Why do we have so many different words for just one thing? 
 
And why are so many words spelt the same but sound different? 
 
In this beautifully illustrated journey through word and rhyme - and even a few jokes - Bill Bryson will teach you how the English language came to be (clue: lots of invasions) and what makes it a rich and beautiful thing (lots of Shakespeare). 
 
Get ready . . . because the story of the English language is an EXTRAORDINARY one.

A Really Short History of Words

An illustrated edition of the bestselling book about the English language

What is the difference between mean and median, blatant and flagrant, flout and flaunt? Is it whodunnit or whodunit? Do you know? Are you sure? 
 
With Troublesome Words, journalist and bestselling travel-writer Bill Bryson gives us a clear, concise and entertaining guide to the problems of English usage and spelling that has been an indispensable companion to those who work with the written word for over twenty years. 
 
So if you want to discover whether you should care about split infinitives, are cursed with an uncontrollable outbreak of commas or were wondering if that newsreader was right to say 'an historic day', this superb book is the place to find out.

Troublesome Words

What does history really consist of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable. And where did all these normal activities take place? At home. 
 
This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. 
And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching, from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live, enhanced in this new edition by hundreds of stunning photographs and illustrations.

At Home (Illustrated Edition)

A short history of private life

This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. 
 
First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles.

Icons of England

Ever wondered how we got from nothing to something? 
Or thought about how we can weigh the earth? 
Or wanted to reach the edge of the universe? 
 
Uncover the mysteries of time, space and life on earth in this extraordinary book - a journey from the centre of the planet to the dawn of the dinosaurs, and everything in between. 
 
And discover our own incredible journey, from single cell to civilisation, including the brilliant (and sometimes very bizarre) scientists who helped us find out the how and why.

A Really Short History of Nearly Everything

W E Bowman

An English comic novel about a World War II expedition to a Himalayan peak. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BILL BRYSON 
 
An outrageously funny spoof about the ascent of a 40,000-and-a-half-foot peak, The Ascent of Rum Doodle has been a cult favourite since its publication in 1956. Led by the reliably under-insightful Binder, a team of seven British men -- including Dr Prone (constantly ill), Jungle the route finder (constantly lost), Constant the diplomat (constantly arguing) -- and 3,000 Yogistani porters sets out to conquer the highest peak in the Himalayas.

The Ascent Of Rum Doodle

Bryson

Bill Smith / Lydia Chin

Bill Clinton & James Patterson stand-alone thrillers

Ebb and Flo

Meg and Mog

Ink and Iron

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Emma and James

And Other Lies

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Jack and Millie

The Lost and Found

George and Flora

Charlie and Lola

From the bestselling novel I'm Travelling Alone, two dynamic characters are born. 
Police investigators Holger Munch and Mia Krüger work together to solve the most complex crimes in Oslo, catching serial killers before they strike again but their personal lives are not simple either. As people, they could not be more different but as they battle their own demons their unlikely pairing make Munch and Krüger the best kind of classic detective duo.

Munch and Krüger

Lizzie and Lucky

Anders Knutas

Faith, Hope and Glory

Gods and Warriors

Wizards and Robots

Noughts and Crosses

Malorie Blackman's ground-breaking, award winning series charts the lives and loves of generations as it takes on race and equality with breathtaking drama and heart wrenching sadness. Set in an alternate reality, where the inferior Noughts live as second class citizens in a world run by Crosses, the four books explore the violent politics of a unstable world, and the ordinary lives caught up in in its terror. Beginning with Noughts and Crosses - and the romance of Seph and Callum - and ending with Double Cross, it is a gripping sequence, and an important, relevant story for our time.

Noughts And Crosses

Harry and the Dinosaurs

Key Words with Peter and Jane

The Knight and Her Emperor

Swallows And Amazons

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