Bill Bryson: "Crazy as fuck but adorable to the tiniest degree"

Transplanted American-Britisher-American Bill Bryson has been named president of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, an 80-year-old rural conservation group that was once "about admiring fluffy lambkins gambolling on the greensward" but is now "deeply involved in intensely political issues, including urban sprawl, affordable rural housing, pressure on green belts, noise and light pollution, and the loss of village post offices, pubs and shops."

Mr. Bryson, who grew up in Iowa, lived in England for 20 years, wrote about his irritated love for the place in Notes from a Small Island, and once, in an interview, described England as "crazy as fuck, but adorable to the tiniest degree" -- which could stand as a decent estimation of most of Mr. Bryson's books, as well, if "crazy" were replaced by "amusingly, crankily sane."