The right track
NOT content with resting on the laurels – and the proceeds – of being one of the world’s most successful writers, Bill Bryson is showing once again that he is far more than merely a wry observer of national foibles.
As president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the American author has made it his mission to return his adopted homeland to its green and pleasant past. In the latest instalment of his drive to do away with the litter that befouls so much of the English landscape, Mr Bryson has turned his ire on the railways, threatening legal action against those who preside over filthy stations, tracks and sidings.
We wish him well. Many an opinion of a country is formed through the windows of its railway carriages and if that view is too often a squalid and litter-strewn one, it reflects not merely on England’s railways but on England itself.