TOP travel writer Bill Bryson is set to be immortalised on screen, with Hollywood icon Robert Redford gearing up to play the author in a major new film.

The movie will also see one of the most popular partnerships in film history reunite after more than 30 years, with screen legend Paul Newman taking on the role of Bryson's old school friend.

And if that wasn't enough, star actress Julia Roberts is said to be keen on playing his wife, Cynthia.

The best-selling author, who once worked as a journalist on the Echo, is hoping to see his book, A Walk in the Woods, about an epic hike across the American wilderness, turned into a cinema blockbuster.

Redford, 67, would take on the role of the author, who in the book is trying to shake off a midlife crisis by undertaking the trek along the 3,380km Appalachian trail.

Newman, 80, is due to play his doughnut-addicted companion, amiable Stephen Katz, a pseudonym for Bryson's old classmate Matthew Angerer from their hometown in Des Moines, Iowa.

The original book chronicles the pair's misadventures as they struggle along the harsh trail, encountering a host of colourful characters, including a group of incompetent Scouts and a perpetually lost hiker, Chicken John.

Redford and Newman have been looking for a chance to team up again since their phenomenally successful pairing in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting in 1973.

Redford, who has been a fan of Bryson's comic tale since it was first published in 1998, believed the film could be their swansong.

"There might be something for Paul Newman and me, if we're not too old.

"That's if Paul can hang on long enough and we can get him on the Appalachian Trail before he gets into a wheelchair," he joked.

Bill, 57, first came to England in the early 1970s, where he worked as a sub-editor at the Echo on Richmond Hill for two years.

He fell in love with the country and famously captured the quirky nature of dear old Blighty in his bestseller, Notes from a Small Island, which features both Bournemouth and the Echo and was made into a TV documentary.

He was back in town last month to pick up an honorary doctorate from Bournemouth University, and now lives in Norfolk with his wife and four children.

First published: May 19