So UK voters in an online poll vote American Bill Bryson as the author who has best defined contemporary England. “What makes Bryson a curious choice is that, if there is one thing the English enjoy more than a bit of self-mockery, it’s laughing at foreigners, especially Americans, whom we’ve traditionally considered as lacking our refined wit, culture and learning. But one of the claims made repeatedly for Bryson, as if it’s the greatest compliment he could hope to receive, is that, having lived in England for 20 years, he – and his humour – have become sufficiently anglicised to give him honorary status and a licence to laugh at us. But is it true that, as Bryson suggests, England spent the twentieth century ‘looking on itself as a chronic failure’?”