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The Bill Bryson BBC Radio Collection
- Divided by a Common Language, Journeys in English and More
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
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Shakespeare
- The World as a Stage
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Shakespeare's life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard: from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died.
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Enjoyable, fun, & informative
- By Ballina Beach on 11-04-2016
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The Road to Little Dribbling
- More Notes From a Small Island
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years ago Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the best-selling travel book ever and was voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the 20th anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey around Britain to see what has changed.
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Typical Bryson
- By Jan on 22-10-2015
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Neither Here Nor There
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Abridged
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Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here Nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.
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Notes from a Small Island
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
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After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move back to the States for a while but before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy....
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Another excellent Bryson book
- By Anonymous User on 05-02-2022
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One Summer
- America 1927
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One Summer: America, 1927, is the new book by Britain’s favourite writer of narrative nonfiction, Bill Bryson. Narrated by the man himself, One Summer takes you to the summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world forever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day, a semi-crazed sculptor with a plan to carve four giant heads into a mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown, and finished it as the most famous man on Earth.
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A Summer more or less
- By Cainsy on 17-05-2015
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Icons of England
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Barnaby Edwards, Ben Eagle, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies.
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Perhaps if you’d grown up in UK it’d be ok.
- By Chris Pedder on 13-10-2020
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Shakespeare
- The World as a Stage
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Shakespeare's life, despite the scrutiny of generations of biographers and scholars, is still a thicket of myths and traditions, some preposterous, some conflicting, arranged around the few scant facts known about the Bard: from his birth in Stratford to the bequest of his second best bed to his wife when he died.
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Enjoyable, fun, & informative
- By Ballina Beach on 11-04-2016
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The Road to Little Dribbling
- More Notes From a Small Island
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Twenty years ago Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his adopted country. The hilarious book that resulted, Notes from a Small Island, was taken to the nation’s heart and became the best-selling travel book ever and was voted in a BBC poll the book that best represents Britain. Now, to mark the 20th anniversary of that modern classic, Bryson makes a brand-new journey around Britain to see what has changed.
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Typical Bryson
- By Jan on 22-10-2015
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Neither Here Nor There
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 38 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here Nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia.
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Notes from a Small Island
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
- Abridged
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After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move back to the States for a while but before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts (as it were), and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy....
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Another excellent Bryson book
- By Anonymous User on 05-02-2022
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One Summer
- America 1927
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 17 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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One Summer: America, 1927, is the new book by Britain’s favourite writer of narrative nonfiction, Bill Bryson. Narrated by the man himself, One Summer takes you to the summer when America came of age, took centre stage, and changed the world forever. In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day, a semi-crazed sculptor with a plan to carve four giant heads into a mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial, and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown, and finished it as the most famous man on Earth.
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A Summer more or less
- By Cainsy on 17-05-2015
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Icons of England
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Barnaby Edwards, Ben Eagle, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies.
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Perhaps if you’d grown up in UK it’d be ok.
- By Chris Pedder on 13-10-2020
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Unruly
- A History of England's Kings and Queens
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: David Mitchell
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.
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Really Worth it
- By Mr. William Wright on 04-12-2023
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Journeys in English
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 2 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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This highly entertaining BBC Radio 4 series is written and presented by Bill Bryson and based on his best-selling book, Mother Tongue. In it, he romps through the history of Britain to reveal how English became such an infuriatingly complex - but ultimately world-beating - language.
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Interesting subject but poorly mastered
- By Rachel C. on 01-03-2021
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The Body
- A Guide for Occupants
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In the best-selling, prize-winning A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson achieved the seemingly impossible by making the science of our world both understandable and entertaining to millions of people around the globe. Now he turns his attention inwards to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological makeup.
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Not Bryson’s best
- By Chelsea on 08-10-2019
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Did I Ever Tell You This?
- By: Sam Neill
- Narrated by: Sam Neill
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unexpected memoir, written in a creative burst of just a few months in 2022, Sam Neill tells the story of how he became one of the world's most celebrated actors, who has worked with everyone from Meryl Streep to Isabel Adjani, from Jeff Goldblum to Sean Connery, from Steven Spielberg to Jane Campion.
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Great storyteller
- By valshopaholic on 23-03-2023
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Lost Horizon
- By: James Hilton
- Narrated by: Michael de Morgan
- Length: 8 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Celebrating the 70th anniversary of this magical and well-loved classic. Following a plane crash, Conway, a British consul; his deputy; a missionary; and an American financier find themselves in the enigmatic snow-capped mountains of uncharted Tibet. Here they discover a seemingly perfect hidden community where they are welcomed with gracious hospitality. Intrigued by its mystery, the travelers set about discovering the secret hidden at the shimmering heart of Shangri-La.
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Sadly Uninspired
- By ivan lloyd on 26-02-2023
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Rambling Man
- My Life on the Road
- By: Billy Connolly
- Narrated by: Billy Connolly
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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In his joyful book, Billy explores this philosophy and how it has shaped him, and he shares hilarious new stories from his lifetime on the road. From riding his trike down America's famous Route 66, building an igloo on an iceberg in the Arctic, playing elephant polo (badly) in Nepal and crashing his motorbike (more than once), to eating witchetty grubs in Australia, being serenaded by a penguin in New Zealand, and swapping secrets in a traditional Sweat Lodge ritual in Canada, Rambling Man is a truly global adventure with the greatest possible travel companion.
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He’s a classic
- By Great on 01-12-2023
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A Walk in the Woods
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Bill Bryson
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
- Abridged
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The Appalachian Trail covers 14 states, and over 2,000 miles. It stretches along the East Coast of the United States, from Maine in the north to Georgia in the south. It is famous for being the longest continuous footpath in the world. (Compare this with the Pennine Way, which is a mere 250 miles long.) It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.
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I love Bryson narrated Bryson books.
- By Dwayne on 03-05-2016
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Dear Bill Bryson
- Footnotes from a Small Island
- By: Ben Aitken
- Narrated by: Ben Aitken
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2013, travel writer Ben Aitken decided to follow in the footsteps of his hero - literally - and started a journey around the UK, tracing the trip taken by Bill Bryon in his classic tribute to the British Isles, Notes from a Small Island. Staying at the same hotels, ordering the same food and even spending the same amount of time in the bath, Aitken's homage - updated and with a new preface for 2022 - is filled with wit, insight and humour.
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I was nearly offended but then was entranced.
- By J Hasler on 01-05-2023
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Watling Street
- Travels Through Britain and Its Ever-Present Past
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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A journey along one of Britain's oldest roads, from Dover to Anglesey, in search of the hidden history that makes us who we are today. Long ago a path was created by the passage of feet tramping through endless forests. Gradually that path became a track, and the track became a road. It connected the White Cliffs of Dover to the Druid groves of the Welsh island of Anglesey, across a land that was first called Albion then Britain, Mercia and eventually England and Wales. Armies from Rome arrived and straightened this 444 kilometres of meandering track, which in the Dark Ages gained the name Watling Street.
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Wonderful!
- By DR Russel Davies on 23-08-2021
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Best Wishes
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you hate gambling ads, pre-ripped jeans and pedestrians who walk five abreast? Do you also have a problem with plastic-wrapped fruit, climate-change deniers and take-away sandwiches priced at $14.95? And, most of all, do you think the world would be a better place if people got back their sense of humour? Here's proof you are not alone. Heartfelt and hilarious, serious but sly, Best Wishes is the Encyclopedia of 'Can Do Better'. It's a plea for a better world – one wish at a time.
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Best Wishes
- By BennyBoy on 17-11-2023
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Everything to Play For
- The QI Book of Sports
- By: James Harkin, Anna Ptaszynski
- Narrated by: Anna Ptaszynski, James Harkin
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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From sport's weirdest rules to its most unlikely heroes, via comically large cricket bats, pole-vaulting priests, creative football chants and exploding billiard balls, each chapter of Everything to Play For is brimming with surprising facts and intriguing stories. Even if you've never asked yourself what David Attenborough has to do with yellow tennis balls, why Victorian doctors feared the outbreak of 'bicycle face' or what led ancient Egyptian athletes to have their spleens removed, this book will give you the astonishing answers - and plenty more besides.
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Excellent
- By Anonymous User on 24-10-2023
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Tripping Over Myself
- A Memoir of a Life in Comedy
- By: Shaun Micallef
- Narrated by: Shaun Micallef
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Comedy has been Shaun Micallef’s guiding light, his refuge, his passport, his lifebuoy, his drug, his mask, his means, his end, his lingua franca, his Self. But it’s not everything. Join Shaun on a journey from his earliest days as a gangly, bespectacled comedy nerd growing up on the mean streets of Adelaide to his rightful place today as a glittering star in Australia’s TV firmament. Though his road to success has not been without its failures – in fact, many, many failures – only a few of them can be blamed on others.
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Enjoyable journey with Shaun
- By Anonymous User on 23-02-2023
Publisher's Summary
An anthology of BBC Radio documentaries featuring the bestselling author
Bill Bryson is the world's funniest travel writer, and a master of comic observation. His hugely popular books, spanning topics from linguistics to Shakespeare to the human body, have sold over 16 million copies and been translated into 30 languages, and his 2003 science book A Short History of Nearly Everything won the prestigious Aventis and Descartes prizes.
This sparkling collection features seven BBC Radio programmes that collectively illuminate his personal passions. In The Art of Travel, he talks to Annette Kobak about his memorable journeys around the USA; while in the 6-part series Divided by a Common Language, he scours American history in an attempt to find out why Americans talk and behave differently from British people. Journeys in English, based on his acclaimed book Mother Tongue, sees him romping through the history of Britain in six episodes, to reveal how English became the complex yet world-beating language it is today.
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park finds Bill heading out across the royal park in the company of Clare Balding, as he discusses his love for walking and exploring. As a castaway on Desert Island Discs, he shares the soundtrack of his life with Sue Lawley; and in With Great Pleasure, he selects some of his favourite writing, including Evelyn Waugh's Scoop, a Hardy Boys classic and Three Men in a Boat. Finally, in Bookclub, he chats to James Naughtie and an audience of readers about A Short History of Nearly Everything.
Contents
The Art of Travel: Bill Bryson
Divided by a Common Language
Journeys in English
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park with Bill Bryson
Desert Island Discs: Bill Bryson
With Great Pleasure: Bill Bryson
Bookclub: Bill Bryson
Production credits
The Art of Travel: Bill Bryson
Presented by Annette Kobak
Produced by Kate McAII
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 27 January 1991
Divided by a Common Language
Presented by Bill Bryson
Produced by Brian King
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 29 July-2 September 1995
Journeys in English
Written and presented by Bill Bryson
Produced by Brian King
First broadcast as Mother Tongue on BBC Radio 4, 13 December 1997-17 January 1998
Ramblings: Windsor Great Park with Bill Bryson
Presented by Clare Balding
Produced by Lucy Lunt
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 24 September 2015
Desert Island Discs: Bill Bryson
Presented by Sue Lawley
Produced by Angie Nehring
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 31 January 1999
With Great Pleasure: Bill Bryson
Readers: Kerry Shale and Bill Wallis
Produced by Mary Ward-Lowery
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 30 September 1999
Bookclub: Bill Bryson
Presented by James Naughtie
Produced by Dymphna Flynn
First broadcast BBC Radio 4, 6 February 2005
Critic Reviews
"There's no writer like him." (The Guardian)
What listeners say about The Bill Bryson BBC Radio Collection
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dirk P.
- 08-05-2023
Another great Bryson
Bryson is a national treasure to two countries. “A Walk in the woods” hooked me in and he has been reeling me in ever since. Every book is smart, clever and entertaining.
This audio reminds me of the late great Douglas Adams recordings (Bryson need not pass), fun to have a listen on the genius of the best writers, possibly thinkers in the world.
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- GaryK.
- 03-06-2023
One of Bill's worst
I have read most all his books and love him. this is a poor book. so many interviews in it sound terrible. you have to strain to hear them. More political than most of his books. Towards the end I found myself skipping to the next chapter because it was boring me. Read a Bryson book, just NOT this one.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Betsy Fowler
- 15-04-2023
Bill Bryson programs on the BBC
I am a committed Bryson fan so I enjoyed these programs! However, only one of them was fairly recent. The rest were 20-30 years old! He has written some very good books in recent years, long after these programs aired. My takeaway was hearing how modest a person he is, which I assume remains true.
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- Shawn
- 10-04-2023
Always incredible!
I absolutely love everything by Bill Bryson! It is especially fun to hear him in an interview setting like this.
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- Tom
- 18-05-2023
Bill Bryson at his best!
I love Bill Brysons books and I have loved listening to some of them. This is really interesting as all his stuff is and it works well as an audio. It’s not a book but a collection but a superb listen
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- Anonymous User
- 15-05-2023
Excellent
Bryson is one of the few who can entertain and inform simultaneously. This collection of broadcasts illustrates his gifts. If you have enjoyed his travels, then try these as well.
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2 people found this helpful
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- GC
- 11-08-2023
Mr Brysons excels yet again.
Bill Bryson delivers a comprehensible communication to the Listener for a kaleidoscope of subjects in such a personable relaxed style that educates and enthuses one to seek out more of his works.
Highly Recommended.
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- Amazon Customer
- 29-06-2023
Vintage Bryson
It was an absolute joy to listen to Bill Bryson over the years. As fresh and relevant as ever!
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- Neil
- 04-06-2023
Good enough…
…if you like Bryson, but not essential listening.
It was interesting to hear some of the older programs knowing what he would go on to do in the future.
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- Jean the Bean
- 27-05-2023
Brilliant, but…
I love Bill Bryson and this collection is a gem. But please, how difficultly would it have been to organise these 7 sections into chapters? Lazy publishing.
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