Nostalgic memoir wrapped in gentle fun

The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson, Doubleday, €25.

Travel and, more recently, popular science writer Bill Bryson journeys back in time with this latest offering.

The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid is a deftly delivered and undeniably funny memoir of his 1950s childhood in mid-west America.

His earlier work, The Lost Continent, a pilgrimage through small-town America in 1988, was, Bryson wrote, inspired by childhood memories, ...