Bill Bryson

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a writer. His success is proof, if proof were needed, that we the British like nothing better than being liked. A small-time journalist from a small-time town, Des Moines, Iowa, an American beacon of insignificance, he was happily pottering along as a newspaper man in this country when, ten years ago, he gave up his job and produced his first book, The Lost Continent. Another travel book followed, Neither Here Nor There, and then in 1995, the one that made him a favourite in Britain, Notes from a Small Island. He's now returned to America, but his latest book, Notes from a Big Country, is a very large postcard proving he hasn't forgotten us, nor we him. It's another bestseller. I am, he says, just a tourist who writes books. He is Bill Bryson. I find that a rather disingenuous statement, actually, Bill, because there's much more emotional commitment in your books than just a kind of passing.

Bill Bryson1:28

I don't know.

Presenter1:29

True.

Bill Bryson1:34

Light Entertainments.

Presenter1:35

But you've been pigeonholed as a travel writer. Perhaps that's not what you are. You're a humorous writer, are you, who happens to get his material from people and places?

Bill Bryson1:43

Well, the point of of you know, disowning myself as a travel rider is simply that I mean, there are a lot of very, very wonderful, real travel riders out there, and I don't pretend to be that kind of a rider. What I I you know, I don't go off and and ride camels across deserts and and go through a great deal of

Presenter2:01

But you walk through woods and up and down.

Bill Bryson2:01

Yeah.

Bill Bryson2:02

I have done that. Was that was the the one r you know, genuine travel writer type experience I've had. But mostly I'm a guy that, you know, I I d I don't do deserts, I do motels and

Presenter2:14

And it's often stuff from your childhood, it's little anecdotes as well. Then there'll be a bit of botany in it, or a bit of history in it, or a bit of linguistics. I mean, it's very accommodating as a as a genre. Perhaps you've created this genre.

Bill Bryson2:17

Yeah.

Bill Bryson2:25

Well, no, I certainly haven't created it, but it it you're absolutely right. It is incredibly accommodating. It's the thing that I like about it so much is that with travel writing you can do virtually anything you could do with, say, fiction in terms of

Bill Bryson2:39

Unlike say biography or history or something like that where you're stuck with with uh you you know you have to be chronological and you have to deal with things as they unfold, with travel writing you can go all over the place. I mean you can talk about what's happening to you at that moment or you can use that as an occasion to hark back to some earlier totally unrelated experience.

Presenter2:59

And you don't have to tell the truth. You can exaggerate to make the point.

Bill Bryson3:02

Yes, I mean, I think it has to be grounded in truth.

Presenter3:06

Well, I'm thinking of Mrs. Smegma, your first British daughter.

Bill Bryson3:08

But that scene is indeed um grounded in truth. Clearly her name was not Mrs. Smegma.

Bill Bryson3:14

She was is is something of a composite of lots of different landladies I ran into in that first trip to Britain, hitchhiking around the country. But almost all those things happened exactly as I described them in the book, telling me to switch off the lights.

Presenter3:31

Telling you wh when you could and couldn't be in your room that you were paying for.

Bill Bryson3:33

That's exactly. You know, that you're expected not to return to the room until four o'clock in the afternoon.

Presenter3:35

Uh

Presenter3:39

She's she was pretty off putting in the beginning when you came to Britain by the sound of her. But so was our weather, which you've described very memorably for me, as mostly dull a land without shadows, like living inside Tupperware.

Presenter3:52

How how come you like

Bill Bryson3:53

Well, I was talking there about a a British winter.

Bill Bryson3:56

Um, there were a lot of l of little things. I just admired a lot of the things about the country. But it was something more than that. I mean, I liked it here from the first moment. I really, really did. The only thing I can compare it to is the experience of when you, you know, fall in love with your wife or partner. You know, like with my wife I think she's she's lovely and and attractive and delightful and a very interesting person and all that, but but I love her because she's her, you know. I mean, it goes beyond that. And and I felt rather that way about Britain. There was just something about it that suited me. And I've never stopped feeling that way.

Presenter4:32

But you've gone away. I'm going to ask you about that. Tell me about your first record.

Bill Bryson4:35

The first record is a a little piece of Gershwin concerto in F for piano. I love Gershwin. Um he seems to me you know the great quintessential musical maestro of the twentieth century in America.

Presenter5:50

Garrick Olson with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra playing part of Gershwin's concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. I have this image of you, Bill Bryson, for those ten years that you worked as a newspaper man in this country, be it on the Bournemouth Evening Echo, the Times or The Independent.

Presenter6:07

Secretly plotting your escape as you plodded in and out to work.

Bill Bryson6:12

Well, what happened was that I was working as a sub editor on newspapers, enjoyed it very much, um, could s be doing it yet if things hadn't changed. I mean, I'd have been quite happy doing that forever.

Bill Bryson6:25

But what happened was that I started freelancing doing articles for magazines and newspapers.

Bill Bryson6:31

and gradually discovered that I enjoyed that more.

Presenter6:34

But apparently um descriptions of you at the time have you as a a pretty regular kind of guy who was quite quiet, kept himself to his you know, decent and solid, turned up at the right time. But nobody had you down as a great wit.

Bill Bryson6:46

No, um well, and I'm not. I mean, I really am not uh at at all. I'm the world's worst teller of stories.

Presenter6:52

But not in right.

Bill Bryson6:52

But not in writing. No, I can only do that through my fingertips. I'm one of these people that when I try to tell a story, I keep interrupting myself and say, No, no, it was it was a Wednesday and it and it was Lancashire, it wasn't Yorkshire and you know, one of those hopeless storytellers. What surprised me was the discovery that how many people assumed writer journalists assumed that it was impossible for a sub-editor to write as well, as if this were a skill that was beyond them, which I thought was a little bit condescending.

Presenter7:23

Yes, wasn't there a famous comment from the deputy editor when you left The Independent, which was I didn't know he could write.

Bill Bryson7:28

Yes. It's it's not actually a skill that is unique to to p practicing journalists. I mean a lot of people could write.

Presenter7:35

But what gave you the guts to do it?

Bill Bryson7:37

What happened was we went up to the Dales on holiday one year. We had a a cottage for a couple of weeks.

Bill Bryson7:43

I fell in love with the landscape. I obviously had been doing a lot of complaining about

Bill Bryson7:48

driving in and out of London and being tired of

Bill Bryson7:51

Stuck at a desk and and saying, I'd sure like to write for a living.

Bill Bryson7:55

Go back to London at the end of the holiday. I go to work.

Bill Bryson7:58

The first day back at work I get a phone call from my wife. She n almost never called me at work. And she says, I just thought you'd like to know I've put the house on the market.

Bill Bryson8:07

And I said, You've what? And she said, And what's more, someone's coming to morrow to look at it. And these people came the next day.

Bill Bryson8:13

bought our house and that was it. I mean we were

Bill Bryson8:18

Committed.

Presenter8:19

Tell me about your second record.

Bill Bryson8:20

The second one I chose was Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding. I think it's just a really, really lovely song. It's so simple, and yet I don't think there's a person on the planet who doesn't like this song.

Bill Bryson8:32

So I'm just gonna sit on the dark of the blade.

Bill Bryson8:38

Watching the tide roll away

Bill Bryson8:43

Sitting on a darker green.

Bill Bryson8:47

Wastin' time

Presenter9:02

Otis Redding, sitting on the dock of the bay. Almost immediately, uh Bill, then, you got the Commission for the Lost Continent, and that was published in nineteen eighty nine. It's about the States. Uh it's you driving around them in your mother's beaten up old Chevrolet. And I think I'm right in saying that that it's lost in two senses lost to you because you no longer lived there, and lost to itself because what was worth while was being destroyed, you seem to be saying. What what was it that was worth while that you were mourning the passing of?

Bill Bryson9:32

Well, I just think there was just uh in the fifties when I was growing up,

Bill Bryson9:35

There was a greater simplicity to life. I mean, America really

Bill Bryson9:39

Had it right in the fifties, and I think we've moved beyond that now. I had it right in the sense that it was an era of great prosperity and comfort and an era of real possibility. I mean, there was just a sense of moving forward, opportunity for all, all that kind of thing, things, the sort of things that nations strive for. We seem to have acquired that kind of level of.

Presenter9:58

So it's inevitable that we've gone past it, but you're saying that that was the beautiful moment?

Bill Bryson10:02

Yes, and but what what troubles me now about America is that we have gone so far past that. You know, I'm I'm struck again and again.

Bill Bryson10:10

Now that we're living back in the States, I go to a shopping mall or something and I look around me and I think, is this really what it's all about? Is all we do in this country is work and make money and spend it. It's true of the world generally, but it's especially true of of the States.

Presenter10:26

But you were i in a way looking for a myth when you went back there, weren't you? Uh y you were looking for the kind of

Bill Bryson10:30

Mm-hmm.

Presenter10:33

Classic American town where Henry Fonder was the kind of principal of the local high school. You're looking for something that didn't really exist.

Bill Bryson10:40

No, and it this had always troubled me, um, right from quite early childhood, that the the small towns that I saw in movies and on television, I read about in books like the Hardy Boys, that sort of thing. They all took place in this perfect little happy, well constructed small town. And and and then you think about things like Norman Rockwell paintings and all of that. I mean, Americans celebrate small town life.

Bill Bryson11:04

in a way that almost no one else does. And yet, you know, when we would go on these mammoth summer vacations with my dad driving this old Rambler station wagon all over the country, we hardly ever saw towns that looked even remotely like these ones from the movies. And it and it had always bothered me. I thought th they've got to be out there somewhere. And and that was part of my

Bill Bryson11:22

Quest, when I went to do the Lost Continent, was I was traveling around and I was looking for the perfect small town.

Presenter11:27

But weren't you also recapturing that childhood with your father?'Cause every summer I think he took you out like that, didn't he? Somewhere across the States.

Bill Bryson11:33

My my father was an absolute demon for going out on big summer vacations. I mean, he would spend a good deal of the winter sitting down with maps and and the triple A guidebooks, Triple A being the American equivalent of AA or RAC, partly because he liked all the detail and partly because he was always looking to see how much money he could save. But he was he liked to be prepared because he was he was a great cheapskate. And then he would take us out for for three weeks every summer and we would go.

Presenter11:59

And you always got lost.

Bill Bryson12:01

Always lost. My father had my my father had this remarkable ability to get very close to the entrance to whatever we were looking for. I mean, if it was in a a big amusement park, it would always be within sight, but he would never actually find the front gate.

Presenter12:14

Going up and down past.

Bill Bryson12:16

Yes. And we would pass this thing like an airplane making passes low passes over an unfamiliar airport. And we would see it, you know, first it'd be out the right hand side of the car and there it is, there it is and then three minutes later it'd be out the left hand side of the car and it was always, you know, but there'll always be like some great industrial zone standing between us and it.

Presenter12:32

But he obviously gave you the travel bug. That's where you got it from.

Bill Bryson12:35

I think so, yeah. Um, but also I I think that just growing up in Iowa, which then and now felt like a very long way away from everywhere, is what gave it to me. It is. It's it is like a little remote island, except that instead of being surrounded by water, you're surrounded by fields of corn.

Speaker 412:45

That's what gave it to me.

Bill Bryson12:53

But for as far as you know, for it takes days to get anywhere from I

Presenter12:53

But for

Presenter12:56

You now famously now wrote as your opening sentence to that first book, I come from Iowa, well somebody had to. Was it really so desperate, you know, as as well as being so large?

Bill Bryson13:07

You know, well, desperate only in the sense if you have aspirations or ambitions to see a wider world. It's it's pretty desperate. In terms of of just a a comfortable, safe, clean, wholesome place to grow up, it couldn't be better. I mean, it was a really wonderful place. Iowans are the nicest people on earth. They really are.

Presenter13:24

Third riff.

Bill Bryson13:26

When I was quite a young man, I my first car was a little M G midget, and I bought this car and I was immensely proud of it and I was out waxing it one warm summer evening in Des Moines and had an eight track tape deck in it and was listening to this album and this particular song and it was just one of those moments when life seemed really good.

Speaker 413:47

Each in a falling rain, mama. Peach in the fall and rain.

Speaker 413:53

That word is something

Speaker 413:56

It really would be something

Speaker 413:59

That would be something to meet you in the fall and rain mama Meeting the falling rain

Speaker 414:07

Meet you in the fall and rain, mama Meet in the falling rain

Presenter14:14

Paul McCartney, and that would be something. So, Bill Bryson, you came to Britain, as we've heard, in the early 70s, fell in love with all sorts of quirky things about us, our Belicia beacons and our feathered pheasants and skinned rabbits hanging in the butchers. How long did it take you to get into the really quintessential stuff, you know, Marmite and Tony Hancock and a lot more?

Bill Bryson14:35

I've never got it tomorrow, Mike. I've tried. There's certain things that just end up defeating you.

Presenter14:42

But you tried, isn't it?

Bill Bryson14:43

I've tried, I tried, I tried with Marmart, I tried with cricket.

Bill Bryson14:47

Um, I I I mean, I really, really tried with cricket. And But you can't. No, I can watch the edited highlights. When they squeeze it all down to forty five minutes, a whole day's play is, you know, compressed. Then it starts to become quite a lively game.

Presenter15:00

It must have been very difficult though. Nevertheless, when you first came here and you went to work on the Bournemouth Evening Echo, that must have been full of parochial English bits and pieces that you couldn't understand, like kind of rotary clubs and biggest leak competitions and

Bill Bryson15:15

Townswomen Guild and Women's Institute reports. We used to spend whole afternoons. You'd get a a pile all written in the same gushing prose and a a a good time was had by all of Mrs Smithers, you know, brought the flower arrangement and it would take you all afternoon to get through them.

Presenter15:31

Then you went to the Times, and of course that was during the Whopping dispute when Rupert Murdoch took on the print union's mid eighties. Your description of that in Notes from a Small Island has been said to be definitive, and I have to say one remembers particularly the the the the Luddite called Vince in the telex room that you describe.

Bill Bryson15:47

How do you describe it?

Presenter15:48

Was he real? Tell me about it.

Bill Bryson15:49

Yeah, he was absolutely real. Not his real name. But um there was this man who whose job was to tear off wire copy, you know, pieces of paper that came in on all the various teletype machines and distribute them around. And there's obviously a certain urgency on newspapers that you need I worked on the business section. We needed the Wall Street closing prices every night. And because of these bizarre and Byzantine lines of demarcation that worked there then, we weren't allowed to cross the threshold of of the room in which all all this clattering activity was going on. You were totally dependent on this terrifying

Bill Bryson16:26

brute, whom I call Vince in the book, and um he would give you the those pieces of paper that you needed when it rather pleased him to. The structure of Fleet Street back then was just so bizarre. It had it had developed over such a long period and it had got so ugly that it really was

Bill Bryson16:44

coming to a kind of explosive point anyway without Rupert Murdoch. I mean, he just he merely pricked the balloon as it were, but it would have happened anyway.

Presenter16:50

But despite all of that and despite the fact that iniquitous bonuses were being claimed by these unions and that the management, the companies were paying people who didn't exist, weren't there? I mean, there were a lot of people on the pay rule who simply didn't exist.

Bill Bryson17:00

I mean there were lots

Presenter17:03

Nevertheless, you didn't approve, it seems to me, from what you've written of Murdoch's actions. Why not?

Bill Bryson17:09

Well, it was I mean f personally it was very painful for us. We were put into this terrible position where we were having to cross picket lines. And we weren't only crossing the picket lines that were manned by th the likes of Vince, these people that had terrified us, but also, you know, the cast out into the street had been people who'd worked in the canteen, who people, the librarians, the secretaries, all of the people from unions that were not

Bill Bryson17:33

particularly balshy. And certainly a on a day-to-day personal level these people were our friends. And and a lot of people, braver people than I, you know, left and wouldn't wouldn't do it. Um y you know, I I I I didn't. I I regret that I didn't, but I had baby and mortgage and all that and like most other people I just sort of did it and and left as soon as I could afford to, and as soon as an opportunity presented itself, eight months later I did leave.

Presenter18:00

Record number four.

Bill Bryson18:01

Oh, it's uh Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, Tom Lehrer. Really very, very funny guy, an academic, American academic who wrote very funny songs in the fifties. And what I remember about this is is being quite small,

Bill Bryson18:15

And listening to my parents listening to an album of Tom Lauren songs and laughing uh very hard while I was up in bed trying to get to sleep and just um you know regretting that I wasn't big enough to go down and join them.

Speaker 418:28

Spring is here, a suffering is here. Life is Skittles and life is beer. I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring. I do, don't you? Of course you do. But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me and makes every Sunday a treat for me.

Speaker 418:51

Oh the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon when we're poisoning pigeons in the pond.

Presenter18:58

Tom Lehrer, poisoning pigeons in the park. So you took to the Yorkshire Dales, you had another baby, so he can play cricket for Yorkshire.

Presenter19:06

The writing was proving lucrative. You'd done the States, done bits of Europe in neither here nor there, and you decided to do us notes from a smaller.

Bill Bryson19:14

But what happened is we decided after we'd been living in in Yorkshire for eight years, we decided to go back to the States for a while, principally to give the kids the experience of living in another country. I'd always felt very lucky that I'd had this chance to be part of two cultures.

Bill Bryson19:32

And so when we had taken this decision that we would move back to America for a time, I thought, well, this would be the opportunity, the occasion, to go off and make a sort of valedictory tour of Britain, this place that had been my very happy home for twenty years.

Presenter19:47

I would have thought a publisher might have been worried about you writing about us,'cause you'd been pretty rude about you know your own people, the Americans. You'd written, hadn't you, about your home town Iowans. They're the sort of people who spent their days circling letters in books called word word puzzles for moron.

Bill Bryson20:02

Yeah.

Presenter20:03

Did they realize you were going to be very nice about us?

Bill Bryson20:05

No, no um no, they they didn't. I was much more worried than the publishers were. They thought that a book on Britain would be commercially would be a very attractive proposition.

Bill Bryson20:15

I think. I was m m much more nervous about the possibility of alienating my audience. British are very hard people to write a book that's directed to because

Bill Bryson20:26

They expect you to be acerbic, to take the mickey, to t to have an edge to what you're saying, but at the same time they wanna be loved. I mean, as i as anyone would.

Presenter20:34

Had a fine line.

Bill Bryson20:35

And it is a fine line. I mean, I really do love it here. Okay. That's my starting point. I admire an awful lot of things about Britain, probably more than most British do. But I had to be careful not to be too gushing, because people won't buy it if if you are. And there are, of course, things that I'm critical about. But what I tried to do was to strike a balance and uh in in the book. And it but it was it felt tricky when I was doing it. You know, you don't want to go too far in one direction or the other.

Presenter20:59

But they offered you a huge advance for this book, didn't they? How much?

Bill Bryson21:04

I won't I don't talk about any publicly.

Presenter21:06

Well, well, let me quote it's been quoted as three hundred and forty thousand sight unseen, no synopsis. I mean, you must have thought, you know, your ship had come in.

Bill Bryson21:15

Well, my ship is, you know, keeps coming in. I I I there's no denying that I have been

Bill Bryson21:20

Just extraordinarily lucky. Uh uh it it is hard to take in. Um, just the the scale of sales and so on. And the fact that it's gone on so long. I mean, it's two and a half years, I think, now in paperback and it's still

Bill Bryson21:32

on the bestseller list and you think, Well, who's who's left to buy the thing? You know? And it's it was never conceived. I mean, you know, it's it's it's a terrible thing really because you think, if I'd known it was gonna do this, I would have worked a lot harder on it, but you know, I just

Presenter21:45

But then it wouldn't have been so good.

Bill Bryson21:46

Well, perhaps I don't know. I don't know.

Presenter21:50

Record number five.

Bill Bryson21:51

Is Loud Mainwright, uh, your mother and I?

Bill Bryson21:55

And I chose this because it was a really sad song. It's about divorce. And and I chose it for sort of sort of the opposite reasons because um when I heard this song I I just it made me feel immensely lucky that I've not been in this position before and and um never expect to be put in this position. So you know, it it just made me feel fortunate.

Speaker 422:16

Your mother and I will do all we can do.

Speaker 422:21

To work this thing out and to take care of me.

Speaker 422:27

Families get broken, I know it's a shame.

Speaker 422:35

It's nobody's fault though, and you're not to blame.

Presenter22:42

Loudon Wainwright the Third, with your mother and I. You're much better known here, Bill, than you are in the States. How much do you think that's got to do with humour and the fact that well, we've got more of it?

Bill Bryson22:55

How modestly you express that.

Bill Bryson23:01

It's not as if Americans don't have a sense of humor. I really hate it when people suggest that because I mean, as we've heard already, Tom Lauren.

Bill Bryson23:07

brilliantly funny. I mean, you know, a lot of the the very funniest people that have ever lived were Americans. But it is a different kind of humor. And the thing that most impressed me about Britain when I first came here was that it it covers a much broader spectrum. I mean, like at the lower end you've got this sort of carry on Benny Hill

Bill Bryson23:26

seaside pier type stuff. And at the upper end you've got the goons and Monty Python and the more zany but tending to be cerebral type stuff that's based on very clever word play and and and that and that sort of thing.

Presenter23:35

Time study

Presenter23:40

An irony. I mean irony

Bill Bryson23:41

And irony is is is is this strand that runs right through it and which we are not always very good at in the States. And we seem to be getting worse at it.

Presenter23:48

Give me an example

Bill Bryson23:49

Well, there was there was education.

Bill Bryson23:51

I was passing through customs and immigration in in Boston, and one of the immigration officials said to me as I passed, he said, Any fruit or vegetables?

Bill Bryson24:00

And I said, Sure, why not? I'll have four pounds of potatoes, please. Grinning when I said it, you know. And he was completely thrown by this. And he said, Sir, are you carrying any materials of a fruit or vegetative nature? And he didn't understand that I was

Bill Bryson24:15

teasing him'cause I was pulling his leg. And it it's that kind of thing that will happen.

Presenter24:19

Obviously humour is a large part of your success.

Presenter24:22

Does it become a bit of a millstone? Do you feel now, as you write, you've got to keep putting the jokes in, because that's what people expect?

Bill Bryson24:30

Ye well, yes. I mean, if I'm doing that kind of a book, yes. And but I've tried to move away from that a bit. I think one of the things I've learned in the process of doing this

Bill Bryson24:40

is that some of the earlier books I thought were just too

Bill Bryson24:44

The humor was too relentless. That it's not sustainable over the length of a book. That you need a little serious relief from time to time. That it it just becomes jokes begin to pall. People don't want to laugh nonstop for two hundred and eighty pages or whatever.

Presenter25:01

Well, it becomes a bit superficial, I suppose.

Bill Bryson25:03

It becomes a bit superficial. Everything you say in in in humorous vein becomes superficial anyway, that that you can make the profoundest point and it will sound glib because you're making a joke about it. And so y you know, I've tried in in more recent books to interject more serious interludes into the books because I just think that helps make the humor work better, but also I think it makes it a

Bill Bryson25:25

A better board.

Presenter25:26

Next record.

Bill Bryson25:29

The next record I've chosen is Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copeland.

Bill Bryson25:34

Which is appropriate to me because um one of my biggest projects in the last few years was I tried to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Presenter25:41

But you fail.

Bill Bryson25:42

I failed.

Bill Bryson25:43

m miserably. Two thousand twenty miles is a distance so you cannot conceive. I mean, if I ask you to imagine it, you're gonna be thinking in terms of

Bill Bryson25:52

air miles or driving miles, but we're talking foot miles. But what we did do is we learned an awful lot about nature and and the gra the greatness of American landscape and and what it is to go out into this very difficult and unfamiliar environment.

Presenter27:06

The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra playing part of the opening of Aaron Copeland's ballet Appalachian Spring, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. You wrote somewhere in your books, Bill, that there were three things in life one couldn't do, beat the phone company, make a way to see you until he's ready to see you, and go home again, since when you've gone home again. What's the verdict? Are you less happy there than you were here? Personally, I mean you.

Bill Bryson27:29

Yeah, and um it was much, much harder than I had expected it to be. We got there and I can remember very, very clearly waking up in this house in New Hampshire that's we had just bought and waking up looking out the window the first morning that we had slept there and and thinking, Oh God, what have we done? Because for me it just felt like a terrible mistake. It was a really it was a catastrophe. It was not what I wanted to do.

Bill Bryson27:56

And what it felt like to me was exactly like moving back in with your parents in middle age. You know, they may be perfectly delightful people.

Bill Bryson28:05

Love them to pieces, you just don't want to live with them anymore. And and I felt like that about an entire country.

Presenter28:10

But what do you miss about us? Tell us how much you miss us.

Bill Bryson28:12

Oh, all kinds of things. I miss

Bill Bryson28:15

I miss friends, of course, because I spent virtually the whole of my adult life here until three years ago. So all of my grown-up long-term friends are here. That was hard. I I miss the pub. I miss television. I mean, I miss the the fact that T V can actually be good sometimes. That it you know, that there is this sense that television actually has an obligation to to give you something more than just just very lightweight entertainment. It's it's it's such a strange sensation. I mean, I come back and I I have actually found myself in the position where I turned on the T V and found myself excited to see John Ketley doing the weather, you know. And it's it's it's it was it was really, really hard. I've now reached the point

Bill Bryson29:02

Well, I'm very much more comfortable with it and really like the fact that I feel happy and comfortable and at home in both places. And that I've bounced back and forth enough now for the last three and a half years that it makes me feel quite suave and cosmopolitan that I could you know get off a plane in Boston and I immediately know what's going on and I'm comfortable and you know nothing there. But being suave.

Presenter29:24

But being suave and cosmopolitan is not what you aspire to at all.

Bill Bryson29:28

Well, it's not actually what I achieve either, but it's what I But it's what I like to fancy myself sometimes.

Presenter29:32

But you aspire to sort of, well, 1950s life, really, don't you? You want it, as you were saying earlier, to be.

Presenter29:39

Really quite small time again where children are wide-eyed with amazement and make things out of brown paper on the other side.

Bill Bryson29:45

I do, you know, I do miss that. I think, you know, there is a certain appealing side to life, a certain satisfaction in in simplicity. I think you do have that rather better here.

Bill Bryson29:57

It's going, it's going everywhere, and

Presenter30:00

Going fast.

Bill Bryson30:00

It's coming very fast. I mean, Britain isn't remotely the same place it was when I came over here. And in a lot of ways, this is a much, much more comfortable, easy country than it used to be. I mean, you know, you can get things on Sunday now. That heartbreak that used to come when you'd go to do your grocery shopping at three o'clock in the afternoon and discover that it was early closing in this particular community. You know, that kind of thing is all gone. It's just fading fast. But there was something that was nice about it. Um, inconvenient as it was, frustrating as it was at times, that it it did impose a certain simplicity on life that y y you know, your ambitions were smaller.

Presenter30:37

Record number seven.

Bill Bryson30:39

is um Archie Roach, who's an Australian, and I know I know almost nothing about him, but that's part of what I I like.

Bill Bryson30:48

Australia is the next book I'm going to do. I'm about to go out to Australia to start doing the research. And one of the things that fascinates me about Australia is that when I go there, there are all these things that are happening there that I've never heard about. And Archie Roach musically seemed like that to me. I I I saw him on television there and he played a couple of they played a couple of snippets from his songs and I thought his music sounded very appealing and it ought to appeal to a wider audience.

Speaker 431:13

On their way

Speaker 431:17

All my saves will bring

Bill Bryson31:23

And you and I

Bill Bryson31:25

Ah

Bill Bryson31:28

Look down and cry.

Bill Bryson31:33

How do you

Presenter31:43

Archie Roach dancing with my spirit. Well, forget about comfort and company now, Bill, because we come to the painful bit. This is where you get dumped um on a desert island with practically nothing. Does it hold any appeal to you at all?

Bill Bryson31:56

No. Um no in the sense that I spend an awful lot of time in uh you know, I I have a great deal of experience with solitude and and um you know, I miss my wife and kids. I'm away from them a lot.

Presenter32:09

But friends and family apart, what do you think you'd miss most about civilized life?

Bill Bryson32:15

I golly, that's I don't know. That's a really good question. Um

Bill Bryson32:20

I I I think I mean I would I would feel terribly frustrated that I couldn't move around. Um you know, that I would want I do have a a measure of wanderlust. I want to keep travelling and ha to have that all entirely taken away. However c comfortable your desert island might be, or however much room there might be to roam on it, I would still, you know, I would feel cheated that I couldn't go to Japan or Australia or some other different place and have that wonderful sense of constant variety in my life.

Presenter32:54

Last record.

Bill Bryson32:56

is um Ann Sophie Muter playing the adagio from Brooks' violin concerto, number one in G minor, which I chose because somebody who really knows music suggested it and I thought it'd make me sound a little classier.

Presenter34:09

And Sophie Mutter playing the adagio from Bruch's Violin Concerto Number One in G minor, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion. Well, that'll cheer you up on your desert island, won't you? Which of the eight, then, if you could only take one?

Bill Bryson34:23

I think it would have to be sitting on the dock of the bay.

Presenter34:26

Your book, you've got the Bible, and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare, sitting waiting for you.

Bill Bryson34:32

Well, if it doesn't seem too vain, I think what I'd like to do would be to take The Lost Continent with me, my own book, because

Bill Bryson34:39

It's you know, one of the things you do when you when you write is um you know, when you read through these books again, you think

Bill Bryson34:47

I wish I'd done that differently. I wish I had a a chance to do that all over again.

Presenter34:51

I'm going to sit and sub yourself while you're in the middle of the morning.

Bill Bryson34:53

I'm gonna sub myself. I think now, you know, the the idea of having

Bill Bryson34:56

That kind of leisure and time

Bill Bryson34:59

And e even if no one ever read it, you know, if if it perished with me out there, I would still it would be so satisfying to be able to take something that you've done and ha have had to live with for a number of years and be able to do it all over again and and try to get it right this time.

Presenter35:13

And your luxury.

Bill Bryson35:15

My luxury, I think, would probably be a basketball and and hoop.

Bill Bryson35:19

I'd also need a little hard standing. Could I ask for that as well?

Presenter35:22

A little outstanding is yours.

Bill Bryson35:30

I think probably the only ball game that you can do on your own and it's immensely

Bill Bryson35:35

soothing and satisfying just to shoot baskets, just to, you know, throw a ball out and try and get it through a circular hole.

Presenter35:44

Bill Bryson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island. Yes.

Bill Bryson35:47

Thank you for having me. It's been my pleasure.

Speaker 235:56

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.