Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My card is the way this week is a writer. His success is proof if proof were needed that we

the British like nothing better than being liked. A small time journalist from a small time town

Des Moines, Iowa, an American beacon of insignificance,

he was happily pottering along as a newspaper man in this country when ten years ago he gave

up his job and produced his first book, The Lost Continent. Another travel book followed

neither here nor there, and then in 1995 the one that made him a favourite in Britain,

notes from a small island. He's now returned to America, but his

latest book, Notes from a Big Country, is a very large postcard proving he hasn't forgotten

us, nor we him, it's another bestseller.

I am he says just a tourist who writes books.

He is Bill Bryson.

I find that a rather disingenuous statement actually Bill because there's much more

emotional commitment in your books than just a kind of passing tourist.

I don't know. I mean they're not intended to be anything other than light entertainments.

But you've been pigeonholed as a travel writer perhaps that's not what you are you

you're a humorous writer are you who happens to to get his material from people and places? Well the point of you know, to get his material from people and places?

Well, the point of, you know, disowning myself as travel rider is simply that, I mean, there are a lot of very, very wonderful

real travel riders out there, and I don't pretend to be that kind of a rider.

What I you know I don't go off and ride camels across deserts and and go through a great deal of

But you walk through woods and up and down mountains.

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