Bill Bryson

American-British author of popular science, travel writing and memoir, born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951 and long resident in the United Kingdom. Bryson made his name with the British travelogue Notes from a Small Island (1995), followed by the road-trip books A Walk in the Woods (1998) and In a Sunburned Country (2000). His accessible history of science A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003) won the Aventis and Descartes prizes and became the biggest-selling non-fiction book of its decade in the UK. He served as Chancellor of Durham University from 2005 to 2011 and was made an honorary OBE (later CBE) for his services to literature.