Down Under: Travels in a Sunburned Country

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The author describes his experiences on the train, the places the train passes through on its way to Perth such as the Blue Mountains and White Cliffs. The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia - its "effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world" - is, in fact, his own. I doubt Bryson would top anyone's list of people to be stuck in a lift with, and yet you can't help hanging on his every word and ascribing it the status of the gospel truth. Not so James Urquhart in the Financial Times: "Down Under exhibits a smoother and more mature humour than previous works.

While Bryson is on your home patch, there is always that anxiety that he is going to trash some icon or way of life that you hold dear. 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. His new number one Sunday Times bestseller is The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island.Also, his insatiable thirst for detail finds him, as ever, ferreting out the who, the why and the where to enhance the reader's knowledge of the book's subject matter. The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia – its “effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world” – is, in fact, his own.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Points well made, but just when you thought all was lost she produced a generous conclusion that helps to explain why Bryson gets away with his speed and shapelessness: "Bryson is such an agreeable, warm-hearted and witty companion that I ended up enjoying this book despite its shortcomings.From my experience, people rarely recognise themselves in books, and of course, the author can always change the names. What I enjoy most is the feeling he gives the reader of moving in close to a subject, examining its quirkiest or most singular aspect, then panning out again to take a more distant or panoramic view. Bryson goes to Australia for a couple of months, produces a hack work that sells massively and even wins over a perceptive reviewer who has immediately seen through its slackness and superficiality.

As a Brit, I found Down Under infinitely less threatening and much more enjoyable than Notes on a Small Island (see separate review); the latter which is nonetheless great itself. From ancient fossils on the West coast that can be found there living in small colonies, to the gold rush of 1849, the same time frame as the ones in the USA and Canada. It was also published as part of Walk About, which included Down Under and another of Bryson's books, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, in one volume.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.

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"). I don’t think I will ever again be on my travels, up against an infuriating person, circumstance or chain of events, without wondering what Bill Bryson would make of this. He reserves his funniest writing for those occasions when he encounters total frustration and annoyance.

Bryson's agreeable writing style , including his unique sense of humour , as with all his books, are an important and entertaining feature.