Down Under: Travels in a Sunburned Country

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 doesn't get much better than this...

'... seriously funny' - Sue Townsend

In his own words, Bill Bryson comes "from Des Moines, Iowa. Somebody had to." Now living in the UK, Bill Bryson made his name with his iconic, insightful and very, very funny books of travel writing including: The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There, Notes from a Small Island (voted the book that best represents Britain in a national poll) A Walk in the Woods and The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. He is also the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything.