Review: Mother Tongue. Bill Bryson. 1990. Around the time I was finishing my first degree in politics and sociology, I read Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue (1990). I had read Bryson before; he is the kind of author, despite a certain level of predictability, who can in a sentence induce a belly laugh so deep and a guffaw so voluminous that he is better not read amongst people, and certainly not whilst travelling on public...