Bill Bryson
I love everything ever written by Bill Bryson but I think I’m going to have to go back and read Notes from a Small Island again. It’s been voted the book most representative of “England” (that’s England, not the rest of the UK). Bear in mind that the poll was conducted amongst BBC Radio 4 listeners. Eh? I listen to Radio 4 for about 12 hours a day and I’ve not heard anything about this vote. Then again, I’ve developed a “trailer antenna” that allows me to go glassy eyed and deaf in the 30-60 seconds between programmes and maybe I missed the call for votes. I like trailers, and I’m sure that the BBC likes trailers but they do tend to overdo them. I can see that I may overdose on Radio 4 and that trailers are repeated to catch different audiences (school run, drive time, etc.) but even so. Maybe the poll was conducted on the message boards. Anyway, it’s great that Bill Bryson has been honoured in this way but I’m surprised at the vote. Will try and read it again this weekend. I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t read the Welsh, Scottish and Irish entries so will be on Amazon later tonight to check those out.
