It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.

Ignoring such dangers and yet curiously obsessed by them Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesnt get much better than this

Bill Brysons bestselling travel books includeThe Lost ContinentandNotes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. Another travel book,A Walk in the Woods,has become a major film starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. His new number oneSunday Timesbestseller isThe Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island.

His acclaimed book on the history of science,A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Societys Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Unions highest literary award. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoirThe Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestsellers wereAt Home: a Short History of Private Life, andOne Summer: America 1927

Bill Bryson was born in the American Midwest, and now lives in the UK. 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.