History Creator / BillBryson

* UsefulNotes/CricketRules: He has mentioned that, to an American, any UsefulNotes/{{cricket}} fan's description of a match or its rules might as well be completely made-up, for how ludicrous it sounds. Ironically, he himself understands cricket perfectly well. From the point of view of a non-American, the parts of ''One Summer: America 1927'' dealing with baseball read much like this. While there are a few explanatory footnotes here and there, Bryson still doesn't appear to get how much about the game (i.e. pretty much everything) you'd have to explain to the average European.

* TheLoad: Katz in the early stages of the trek on the Appalachian Trail.

* UsefulNotes/EsperantoTheUniversalLanguage: He's written that "Esperanto looks basically like a cross between Spanish and Martian."

* UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore: So obscure, he's no longer obscure.

* AwfulBritishSexComedy: The first movie he ever saw in England was called ''Suburban Wife Swap''.

* {{Bizarchitecture}}: Discovered in 'Down Under'.

* ChivalrousPervert: He comes across as such from time to time.

!!Tropes:

* AlliterativeName: '''B'''ill '''B'''ryson. However since his real name is William, this is averted.

* AdaptationalAttractiveness: In the film adaptation of ''A Walk in the Woods'', Bryson is protrayed by Creator/RobertRedford, who -- by Bryson's own admission -- looked better pushing 80 than Bryson did in his mid-40s. Also, in the book, Mary Ellen is described as being quite large in stature whereas the film version is portrayed by a slim Creator/KristenSchaal.

* AgeLift: In the book ''A Walk In The Woods'', Bryson and his walking companion (the pseudonymous "Stephen Katz") are 44 years old, but the film makes them a generation older and played by Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, to allow for the fact that forty-something Hollywood actors wouldn't look like people too old and fat to have much chance of hiking the Appalachian Trail.

* AGoodNameForARockBand: Seemingly brought up, but then averted (perhaps deliberately) in ''At Home'', when Bryson mentions in passing one Jethro Tull, inventor of the seed mill. At least some editions mention, on the very same page, a [[NamesTheSame Bruce Campbell]] who bred cattle.

* DownerEnding: ''The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid'' is mostly a very cheerful, nostalgic autobiography about Des Moines in the 1950s and 1960s but the final chapter is something of a tearjerkerr as the fates of people and places are recalled; Bryson Sr. died in 1986, '[[ButtMonkey Milton Milton]]' died in the 1991 Gulf War, Jed Mattes died from cancer. Nearly all of the shops, diners, and other hangouts were closed and bulldozed, the city's elm trees all died off, the amusement park is now an empty lot. The last line is "What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid.”

* PuffOfLogic: From near the beginning of ''A Short History Of Nearly Everything'':
--> "It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."

* JarPotty: In ''The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid'', Bill recounts how his mother had him use the "toity jar" whenever he needed to pee as the family were preparing to leave the house. This was all very well until he realised that [[IAteWhat she was washing out former toity jars to use as food containers]], at which point his father put a very firm stop to it.

* ''The Road to Little Dribbling'' (2015)

** In another place he discusses the cliché of people being dealt serious punishment (deportation, imprisonment etc) for the theft of a handkerchief. As he points out, this is nearly always given as an example of just how disproportionate punishment could be in the 17th and 18th centuries. But in fact, as Bryson goes on, silk would have been incredibly valuable, even rich people able to afford only a small handkerchief. It would probably have been the most valuable thing some middle-class people owned outside of their house.

* OlderThanTheyLook: The author, aided considerably by a bushy beard he has sported since relatively young.

->''"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."''\\
--'''First line of ''Lost Continent'''''

'''William [=McGuire=] "Bill" Bryson''', borns in Des Moines, Iowa, journalist-turned-author. He moved to the UK as a young man and has since alternated continents of residence, providing him with a unique cross-cultural perspective that has in turn been translated into hilariously acerbic travelogues. More recently he has returned to his early focus on general socio-historical trivia.

In his spare time he serves as the Chancellor (basically, honorary President) of Durham University and as a campaigner for various causes active in the preservation of historical UK buildings and landscape features.

* ''The Lost Continent'' (1989)
* ''The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way'' (1990)
* ''Neither Here Nor There'' (1991)
* ''Notes From A Small Island'' (1995)
* ''A Walk In The Woods'' (1998)

* ''The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid'' (2006)
* ''[[Creator/WilliamShakespeare Shakespeare]]: The World As a Stage'' (2007)
* ''At Home: A Short History Of Private Life'' (2010)

* AdHominem: In ''One Summer: America 1927'', Bryson slips into the "Poisoning the Well" variant during the discussion of the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti, listing several facts about the two of them (they were card-carrying anarchists who knew other people guilty of bombings and such) that, while not casting the two in any particularly good light, also appear to have no bearing on them being guilty of the crime they were executed for.

* AgeLift: In the book ''A Walk In The Woods'', Bryson and Katz are 44 years old, but the film makes them a generation older (played by Robert Redford and Nick Nolte), to allow for the fact that forty-something actors wouldn't look like people too old and fat to have much chance of hiking the Appalachian Trail.

* AwfulBritishSexComedy: The first movie he ever saw in England was called ''Suburban Wife Swap.''

** The "Rules for Living" chapter in ''Notes From A Big Country'' is a self-parody with the list of new regulations becoming increasingly authoritarian and suited to the author's whims - for example that "all reviews of the author's work must be cleared with the author beforehand".

* CharacterizationMarchesOn: It is possible to track a distinct evolution in Bryson's attitudes and prejudices reading his books chronologically. He seems to become mellower and less judgmental in later books, perhaps as he becomes increasingly learned. In earlier books his treatment of women verges on outright misogyny, but in his most recent books he seems to have come over to the side of feminism (he uses 'she' as a default pronoun and is very active in documenting the achievements of women is his books about history and science, and is keen to denounce their often unacknowledged importance to their fields).The writer of books like 'A Short History Of Nearly Everything' and 'At Home' feels like a much more informed and open-minded man that the writer of 'The Lost Continent'. WordOfGod in [[http://augustjordandavis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/mark-lawson-talks-to-bill-bryson.html a BBC interview]] addresses this with Bryson admitting that much of his more [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] crude humour in early books came from general inexperience at having to write full length books and maintain the reader's attention.

* UsefulNotes/CricketRules: He has mentioned at one point that, to an American, any UsefulNotes/{{cricket}} fan's description of a match or its rules might as well be completely made-up, for how ludicrous it sounds. Ironically, he himself understands cricket perfectly well. From the point of view of a non-American, the parts of ''One Summer: America 1927'' dealing with baseball read much like this. While there are a few explanatory footnotes here and there, Bryson doesn't appear to get how much about the game (i.e. pretty much everything) you'd have to explain to the average European.

** Some of the people who were shipped off to Australia. Better than being hanged for ''impersonating an Egyptian'' sure, but still. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] at the time. Before [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain the Victorian Era]], the likelihood of catching criminals in a big city like London was so incredibly low that the punishments for the few caught had to act as a deterrent.
** In another place he discusses the cliche of people being dealt serious punishment (deportation, imprisonment etc) for the theft of a handkerchief. As he points out, this is nearly always given as an example of just how disproportionate punishment could be in the 17th and 18th centuries. But in fact, as Bryson goes on, silk would have been incredibly valuable, even rich people able to afford only a small handkerchief. It would probably have been the most valuable thing some middle-class people owned outside of their house.

* TheEighties: Writing ''The Lost Continent,'' Bryson is startled to see how much America had changed since TheSixties. Reading it today is reveals how much the country has changed ''since 1987-88.'' It's certainly one of the last works to mention [[{{Disneyfication}} strip clubs in Times Square.]]

** ''A Short History Of (Nearly) Everything'' goes one better, making it clear how fantastically improbable it is you even ''exist'', let alone survived as long as you already have.

* TheFifties: features strongly in ''The Life And Times of the Thunderbolt Kid'', which describes Bryson's childhood years in the decade, and the America of those days which provided its context.

** Done with deliberate comic exaggeration when trying to describe listening to cricket on Australian radio: "Tandoori took Rogan Josh for a stiffy at Vindaloo in '61"
** Bryson himself has stated in one of his books that he understands cricket quite well. It's logical, he has lived in the Cricket-crazy North of England for decades now.

* ImColdSoCold: He discusses the dangers of hypothermia to Appalachian Trail hikers in ''A Walk In The Woods'', and the 'Paradoxical Undressing' phenomena, wherein they remove all their clothes. He also recounts a day when he went off hiking and forget to pack his waterproofs. He gets soaked by the incessant drizzle and starts to lose track of time... [[spoiler:it turns out that his watch had stopped.]]

* TheLoad: Katz in the early stages of the trek on Appalachian Trail.

* OlderThanTheyLook: The author, albeit mitigated considerably by a bushy beard in recent years.

* SeparatedByACommonLanguage: In ''The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way'' Bryson brings up how in the 1970's Robert Burchfield claimed that eventually American and British English would eventually become different languages. In 1990, when ''Mother Tongue'' was written, no one could have predicted the rise of broadband Internet allowing us to talk to each other, play games together, read each others writing, and watch each others movies - it makes for a very interesting look back.

** Bryson's story of his travels in Australia was published globally as the equally self-explanatory ''Down Under'' -- except, rather mystifyingly, in North America where it instead received the title ''In A Sunburned Country''.

* LongList: Reporting on a waitress' offer of pie in ''Lost Continent'': "We got blueberry, blackberry, raspberry, boysenberry, huckleberry, whortleberry, cherry berry, hair berry, Music/ChuckBerry, [[BreadMilkEggsSquick beri-beri]] and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers lemon]]."

* DownerEnding: ''The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid'' is mostly a very cheerful, nostalgic autobiography about Des Moines in the 1950s and 1960s but the final chapter is something of a TearJerker as the fates of people and places are recalled; Bryson Sr. died in 1986, '[[ButtMonkey Milton Milton]]' died in the 1991 Gulf War, Jed Mattes died from cancer. Nearly all of the shops, diners, and other hangouts were closed and bulldozed, the city's elm trees all died off, the amusement park is now an empty lot. The last line is "What a wonderful world it was. We won’t see its like again, I’m afraid.”

* PerspectiveFlip: [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/09/01/bill-brysons-stephen-katz/71494350/ In an interview for USA Today]], Stephen Katz (Real name: [[spoiler:Matt Angerer]]) gave his side of several experiences Bryson wrote about, including the trip to Europe in the 70s and the events of ''A Walk in the Woods''. Apparently [[spoiler:Angerer]] ''just'' got used to walking the Appalachian Trail when Bryson called it off, and he went home while Bryson walked on successive trails in middle Appalachia, only for Bryson to call him to come walking on the final stretch together afterwards, which required that he get used to walking in the forest ''all over again''. He also was not as womanising as the book claimed he was. They went to Cuba together after the book sold well.

* PerspectiveFlip: [[https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/09/01/bill-brysons-stephen-katz/71494350/ In an interview for USA Today]], Stephen Katz (Real name: [[spoiler:Matt Angerer]]) gave his side of several experiences Bryson wrote about, including the trip to Europe in the 70s and the events of ''A Walk in the Woods''. Apparently [[spoiler:Angerer]] ''just'' got used to walking the Appalachian Trail when Bryson called it off, and he went home while Bryson walked on successive trails in middle Appalachia, only for Bryson to call him to come walking on the final stretch together again, which required that he get used to walking in the forest ''all over again''. He also was not as womanising as the book claimed he was. They went to Cuba together after the book sold well.