AUTHOR and former Daily Echo journalist Bill Bryson is considering putting down the pen for good.

The 68-year-old told Times Radio he had been treating retirement as an experiment this year and “it has been successful and I’m pretty likely to continue”.

Bill worked at the Daily Echo in the 1970s and previously said he still has a soft spot for Bournemouth.

Speaking to the Daily Echo previously about his time in Dorset, he said: "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."

His books include A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Lost Continent, but he is perhaps best known for a travel book on his adopted homeland Notes from a Small Island.

In the book, he described Durham as “a perfect little city” and Bryson went on to become chancellor of the university in 2005.

Born in Iowa and now a dual US-UK citizen, Bryson told the station in an interview to be broadcast on Thursday he was worried about running out of things to do if he stopped writing.

He added: “That has not been the case.

“The world is full of other things to do that are enjoyable without any of the pressures that come with you doing this as a job.”