Notes from a small scandal: Bill Bryson’s image tarnished

When the anglophile American author Bill Bryson became president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England it was seen as not only a publicity coup for a long-established environmental charity with a somewhat stuffy image, but as a natural step for someone who has written so plangently about the beauties of the British countryside. Now a dispute over a new housing development in Durham threatens to tarnish Bryson's image.

Campaigners are furious over the proposed building of an upmarket homes on open land in Durham which the university sold to the city's council in 1944. Since the sale, the land has been protected from development by a covenant placed on it by the university, limiting its use to 'recreational purposes'. Last year, the governing council of the university voted to rescind the covenant so that building can go ahead on the spot, which offers fine views of Durham cathedral, a world heritage site. The chancellor of Durham university? That'll be Bill Bryson.

Bryson could not have prevented the council from voting, but local campaigners claim that he has not done enough to support their campaign – which seems, on the surface, to be exactly the sort of issue the CPRE takes on – and have accused him of hypocrisy. Bryson recently attacked the government's new planning bill, accusing it of "breathtaking disregard" for the landscape.

Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, but has spent 24 years of his life living in the UK. In his best-selling American-abroad book Notes from a Small Island, he writes of Durham as "a perfect little city".