logo
episode-header-image
Feb 2021
49m 24s

Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island

Bbc World Service
About this episode

This month World Book Club discusses Bill Bryson’s hugely acclaimed travelogue Notes from a Small Island with the author and his readers around the world. After two decades as a resident of the United Kingdom, Bryson took what he thought might be a last affectionate trip around his adoptive country before returning to live in his native America. Notes from a Small Island is the irreverent and hilarious account of this meandering journey through his beloved island nation. From Dover to Downing Street, from Giggleswick to Loch Ness by way of Titsey and Nether Wallop, Bryson rejoices in Britain’s inimitable placenames and much else of more substance besides, his very own State of the Nation address, as it were.

A huge number-one bestseller when it was first published, Notes from a Small Island has become that nation's most loved book about Britain.

(Picture: Bill Bryson. Photo credit: Catherine Williams.)

Up next
Jan 1
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni - The Palace of Illusions
Harriett Gilbert welcomes bestselling author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni into the World Book Club studio to discuss her internationally acclaimed novel, The Palace of Illusions.A luminous reimagining of the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharat, The Palace of Illusions traces the li ... Show More
1h 7m
Dec 1
Philippa Gregory: The Other Boleyn Girl
Harriett Gilbert welcomes bestselling author Philippa Gregory into the World Book Club studio to discuss her celebrated historical novel, The Other Boleyn Girl.This novel, about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, is a vivid portrayal of ambition, love, and betrayal in the Tudor C ... Show More
55m 8s
Nov 1
Oyinkan Braithwaite - My Sister, The Serial Killer
Harriett Gilbert welcomes Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite into the World Book Club studio to discuss her internationally bestselling debut, My Sister, the Serial Killer — a darkly comic thriller that has captivated readers around the globe.This is the story of two sisters, Ko ... Show More
50m 40s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2019
Bill Bryson: US author demystifying the British
Sometimes it takes an outsider armed with just a sharp eye and curiosity to get us to see ourselves as we really are. That would explain the enduring popularity of the American-born writer Bill Bryson, whose wry take on Britain and the British has generated two best-selling books ... Show More
23m 25s
Oct 2021
The Slate Island of Seil
Clare crosses the famous ‘Bridge over the Atlantic’ for a ramble on the island of Seil. Her guide is the writer, educator, and director of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics, Norrie Bissell. Geopoetics is described as “creatively expressing the earth” and is critical of the weste ... Show More
24m 6s
May 2020
Woods, Weeds and Wildflowers: Nature Poetry
Since her first collection, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1996, Alice Oswald has been a major voice in UK poetry, with collections that frequently examine the natural world. In 2002 she won the T.S. Eliot Prize for 'Dart', a ... Show More
44m 18s
Nov 2020
David Mitchell, novelist
David Mitchell has published eight novels, two of which – number9dream and Cloud Atlas – have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also translated two books on autism from Japanese, working with his Japanese wife: their son is on the autistic spectrum. While his work als ... Show More
36m 58s
Aug 2019
Robinson Crusoe
<p>Was Robinson Crusoe real? According to the book it was 'written by himself'.</p><p>To establish the facts, Matthew Parris is joined by two notable desert island survivors to discuss Crusoe’s life and strange adventures, during 28 years on an uninhabited island near the mouth o ... Show More
24m 47s
Nov 1995
Umberto Eco
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50.He'll be talking to Sue La ... Show More
36m 46s
Mar 2019
4. The Greenland Vikings - Land of the Midnight Sun
One of the most unlikely tales of a society’s fall in is the incredible saga of the Vikings of Greenland. Find out the history of how these European settlers built a society on the farthest edge of their world, and survived for centuries among some of the harshest conditions ever ... Show More
1h 22m
Oct 2021
Daily: 660 AD and All That: The Anglo-Saxon Mystique
The Anglo-Saxons represent one of the most vital and important periods in English history, but then why do we know so very little about them? Marc Morris, historian and author of The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England, takes Nick Cohen on a journey though one of ... Show More
29m 33s
Oct 2021
The British Academy Book Prize 2021
Racial injustice in USA; ghost towns in post-industrial Scotland; how maritime history looks from the viewpoint of Aboriginal Australians and Parsis, Mauritians and Malays; the roots of violence that has plagued postcolonial society. These are topics covered in the books shortlis ... Show More
45m 2s