CYP Now - Interview - Keep Britain tidy - Bill Bryson, president, Campaign to Protect Rural England

Bill Bryson doesn't regard himself as a role model for young people. On the issue of engaging them in the Campaign to Protect Rural England's current drive to stop littering, he admits: "What a campaign like this needs is for young people to be hearing from someone who isn't an old fart like me. It's no good me looking to young people to join the campaign. They aren't going to do something just because I say so."

It's true that Bryson, a noted and much-loved American author and Anglophile, may not have quite the clout that's required to connect with streetwise young people - and he knows it."The hardest thing in the world is for older people to get through to young people," he says.

However, Bryson - whose passion for Britain in general and the countryside in particular is both evident and infectious - has given plenty of thought to getting the anti-litter message across to young people and teaching them why they should love rural areas as much as he does.

"The government needs to do something to encourage urban young people, such as school trips," he says. "Perhaps farm kids should come to the city and get an understanding of what it's like there and we could have exchanges between urban and rural schools. It would do both sides good to understand each other's issues and points of view."

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