Bill Bryson: 'The British have become more greedy and selfish' like the US

'Britain used to be a much more orderly and well-behaved society'

I never bothered to vote...But if Donald Trump won by one vote, and I hadn’t registered, I would never forgive myself (DAVID HARTLEY/REX)

US-born author Bill Bryson has said that the British are “more greedy and selfish” than they used to be, and suggested people had voted with their hearts rather than their heads in the EU referendum.

Since he wrote his breakthrough book about the UK, Notes From A Small Island, two decades ago, Mr Bryson said British living standards had increased.

But, after travelling the country again for the sequel The Road to Little Dribbling, he said the British appeared to have let their manners go.

“Britain used to be a much more orderly and well-behaved society," he told The Times.

“Now, the British have become more greedy and selfish, more like the American model, except they haven’t quite mastered it yet.”

The author said he felt the EU referendum was “a completely emotional event, not an intellectual one”, and reflected a Euroscepticism in the UK that he remembered from the 1980s.

“It kind of reminded me of when the Channel Tunnel was being built. A lot of people felt uncomfortable having a physical link to the continent, as if Germans or even the French might invade through the tunnel," he said.

“It was clearly an irrational feeling of losing a sense of being an island and separate.”

Mr Bryson, born in Iowa, first visited the UK during a backpacking trip around Europe when he was in his 20s. He got a job at psychiatric hospital in Surrey, and decided to stay.

“I couldn’t do now what I did then,” he said. “The world has made it a lot harder for people to be immigrants.”

Mr Bryson met a nurse, Cynthia, while working at the hospital and said he ended up “falling for her and falling for England literally simultaneously".

He added: “It does surprise me that 40 years on I am still very fond of them both.”

He told The Times that his agent had asked him to pen the sequel for “crassly commercial” reasons, but that he had accepted after realising that the original had become somewhat dated.

“It’s history now really. It’s talking about a world that had Princess Diana in it, where John Major and Margaret Thatcher were still forces to be reckoned with," he said.

“So I thought, ‘Yeah, it won’t be too preposterous to go out and see how Britain has changed and how I have changed.'”

While writing The Road to Little Dribbling, Mr Bryson travelled across the country between the UK mainland’s southernmost and northernmost geographical points.

He said he found Britain itself to be “much improved”. And British people were richer and had more comfortable lives than they did 20 years ago.

“People have a lot more money in their pockets, richer lives, better experiences,” he said. “We travel so much more now. My kids go overseas three times a year at least.”

Despite spending most of his years in England, Mr Bryson still considers himself to be American: “I was born American the same way I was born left-handed. And I will always be left-handed.”

For the first time, he has registered to vote in the upcoming US election: “I never bothered to vote,” he said. “It’s 360 million people – what do they need me for?

“But if Donald Trump won by one vote, and I hadn’t registered, I would never forgive myself.”