He arrives at his destination, finds a hotel, meanders around the neighbourhood, has a couple of drinks, eavesdrops on a conversation or two, then goes to bed.

First, the downside - and the crucial dividing line that distinguishes true travel writing from a superior tourist guide. I think my favourite episode in the whole book is when Bill and his increasingly tetchy companion drive around Darwin several times trying to find a hotel whose name is unaccountably different from the name it went by when he booked it. His new number one Sunday Times bestseller is The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. Bryson goes to Australia for a couple of months, produces a hack work that sells massively and even wins over a perceptive reviewer who has immediately seen through its slackness and superficiality.We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.

The problem is that, after a few pages, one finds oneself looking forward to the moments when Bryson takes us back to the library. Accessoirement je vous dirais bien de lire ce roman de Cordwainer Smith : " NORSTRILIA " qui traite de l'Australie .It was also published as part of Walk About, which included Down Under and another of Bryson's books, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, in one volume. This book shows its roots - in a colour supplement commissioned by The Mail On Sunday, padded out with some A-level history and lots of twee observations of a country crossed at speed. The first part of the book mainly describes the journey taken by Bryson aboard the Indian Pacific from Sydney to Perth. The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia – its “effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world” – is, in fact, his own.

Having visited several of the Australian locations in this book – Sydney, Canberra, Alice Springs, Uluru, Darwin, and the Great Barrier Reef, among several others – I loved reading about Bill Bryson’s experiences there in his brilliant piece of travel writing, Down Under. The laugh out loud passages on his introduction to cricket I applaud, the game makes as much sense to me as it did to Bill. He has written books on language, on Shakespeare, on history, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoir The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid .

He gives a totally new complexion to the concept of ‘hard luck’, ‘missing out’, or ‘arriving too late’. The thing that Bryson most loves about Australia - its "effortlessly dry, direct way of viewing the world" - is, in fact, his own. Points well made, but just when you thought all was lost she produced a generous conclusion that helps to explain why Bryson gets away with his speed and shapelessness: "Bryson is such an agreeable, warm-hearted and witty companion that I ended up enjoying this book despite its shortcomings.