He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid . The Lost Continent (1989) was a rite of passage: when his father died it prompted him to discover the continent lost with his youth.

When I later checked this hotel out, I discovered that several travellers had indeed given it a very low star rating with a mixture of scornful comments.Bill Bryson describes his travels by railway and car throughout Australia, his conversations with people in all walks of life about the history, geography, unusual plants and animals of the country, and his wry impressions of the life, culture and amenities (or lack thereof) in each locality.

The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia - its "effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world" - is, in fact, his own. There is no shortage of idiots - which is why Down Under will sell thousands more copies than Anglo-Australian Attitudes. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Because he did not spend long in Australia, occasionally the material in Down Under is so thin that even Bryson can't raise a good joke, and is obliged to wheel out Jurassic specimens ("a place where men were men and sheep were nervous").Having visited several of the Australian locations in this book – Sydney, Canberra, Alice Springs, Uluru, Darwin, and the Great Barrier Reef, among several others – I loved reading about Bill Bryson’s experiences there in his brilliant piece of travel writing, Down Under. Unsurprisingly I haven’t visited many of the wonderful places in Bills book but have a hunger to do so next time I go and will plan accordingly.