AT HOME does for the history of the way we live what A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science. Bill Bryson was struck one day by the thought that we devote a lot more time to studying battles and wars than to what history really consists of: centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping and merely endeavouring to get more comfortable. So he embarked on a journey around his own house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to room to 'write a history of the world without leaving home'.