AUTHOR and former Daily Echo journalist Bill Bryson has revealed that his "obsession" with litter led to him taking up the invitation to stand as president of the Campaign for Rural England.

He approached the organisation for advice after deciding he wanted to do something about the problem.

"I have become increasingly obsessed about litter, especially litter in the countryside," he explained.

"A lot of us spend time bitching about it, but don't get around to doing something.

"It's not going to change anything the CPRE does - this is just an extra and I have promised to work very hard on it. It's a really good issue."

Bill described the invitation as a "huge honour".

"The CPRE has an extremely distinguished record and deserves to be a lot better known," he said.

"We have a lot to be grateful for, including national parks and green belt. Britain is a much lovelier place as a consequence of these people working so hard."

He added: "It's an advantage to be a foreigner in a lot of ways.

"Coming from a place that doesn't have a terribly beautiful countryside - Iowa - and that doesn't have a lot of history and antiquity, like Stonehenge, Hadrian's Wall or Maiden Castle, I appreciate it all the more.

"I'm not carrying a lot of cultural baggage. I'm not an upper class toff or a working class yob. I'm as neutral as you can be."

Bill, who worked at the Daily Echo in the 1970s, still has a soft spot for Bournemouth.

"I would like to come back and spend some time there. The Echo was the first English newspaper I worked on. It was my first grown-up job.

"Dorset is one of the two or three most beautiful counties in the whole of England.

"My own personal feeling is the walk from Studland towards Swanage is as beautiful as any landscape gets anywhere.

"Poole Bay is a really lovely stretch of water. Inland Dorset also takes some beating.

"If we could have found a house, we would have settled back there.

"There was a really nice place in Studland, but by the time we phoned, it was sold. We also looked at a house near Fordingbridge."

Bill and his British wife Cynthia settled near Norwich instead. "I wasn't sure I wanted to live in a flat place again because I spent so long wanting to move out of one, but the house we found was too good.

"Sometimes you see a place and it feels exactly right. I have no intentions or desires to go anywhere else," he said.

He sees keeping the English countryside productive and beautiful as the biggest challenge ahead.

"Farming is an increasingly uneconomic activity. If we want to keep a really beautiful countryside, it's going to cost us," he warned.

"In Iowa, nobody has ever gone out into the countryside to enjoy being in farmland. There's a sense of ownership here.

"It means there's going to be conflict, but it also means the countryside will never wither away."