I tremble sometimes imagining a Bill Bryson book coming to life and walking among us. So rabidly know-it-all! Facts dripping from every fang! Anecdotes oozing from its hideous ululating tongue!

American travel writer, Bill Bryson, has won the 2004 Aventis Prize for Science Books for his first book on science, A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson received the prize, which is worth £10 ...