At Home

What does history really consists of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business – sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable.

And where did all these normal activities take place?

At home.

This was the thought that inspired [...]
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What does history really consists of? Centuries of people quietly going about their daily business – sleeping, eating, having sex, endeavouring to get comfortable.

And where did all these normal activities take place?

At home.

This was the thought that inspired Bill Bryson to start a journey around the rooms of his own house, an 1851 Norfolk rectory, to consider how the ordinary things in life came to be. And what he discovered are surprising connections to anything from the Crystal Palace to the Eiffel Tower, from scurvy to body-snatching,from bedbugs to the Industrial Revolution, and just about everything else that has ever happened, resulting in one of the most entertaining and illuminating books ever written about the history of the way we live.



Entertaining, fact-packed...He is a cheery,idiosyncratic guide, eclectic rather than scholarly, a true populariser. At Home will have every reader eyeing home rather differently. - Financial Times



Not just hugely readable but a genuine pageturner...None of these things, needless to say, are as easy as Bryson in his ever-genial way makes them seem.

James Walton - Daily Telegraph



The method is to amass a dazzling number of facts and findings from disparate sources…riveting…arguing with Bryson is part of the enjoyment of reading him, and accompanying him across swathes of layered history. - Victoria Glendinning Spectator



At Home takes us on a tour not merely of Bryson's house but of the amazingly well-stocked mind of a man who can see a world in a grain of sand. He addresses his readers as if they were welcome visitors to his home whom he is eager both to inform and to entertain; he is a guide of inexhaustible patience, good humour, and irresistible enthusiasm.- Susan Hill The Lady



By rummaging down the back of the nation's sofa, Bryson has come up with a light-hearted and endlessly fascinating story...What you want from him is his wry humour and ability to raise a quizzical eyebrow at the sheer oddness of the human race. - Kathryn Hughes Mail on Sunday



A charming read that blends scholarship with warm writing and provides an endless source of banter for dinner parties. - Good Housekeeping



The much-loved writer takes the attention to detail that made A Short History of Nearly Everything such a fantastic guide to all things science, and applies it to our homes. Written in his laid-back style, this is a wonderful celebration of what makes a house a home. - News of the World



Enchanting...Bryson tackled science in his brilliant A Short History of Nearly Everything. This new book could as easily be categorised as 'a short history of nearly everything else'...extraordinarily entertaining. - Antonia Senior The Times



Quite as ambitious as his A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is a genuinely compelling book...a kind of layman's encyclopaedia full of 'did you know' moments...This companionable volume is as dense as a rich fruit cake and, by the same measure, rewarding, too. - Country Life



Bryson hoards facts. He can't resist a well-turned story...An idiosyncratic sweep through the makings of modernity. - Observer