Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe LONDON, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- Touchstones of the English countryside like village pubs and red phone boxes are vanishing fast in the name of corporate profit, an American author says. Writer Bill Bryson, who lives in England, called it "heartbreaking" to see things like local shops, post offices and hedgerows disappearing, and urges they be saved "before the only icons we have left are corporate logos," The Daily Telegraph reported Friday. Advertisement Bryson, president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said people are "beginning to appreciate that their national heritage is unique but dangerously finite." About 4,000 pubs have disappeared since 1980, the British Beer and Pub Associated said. "It is a shrinking market and the dominance of a few chains has contributed to the disappearance of traditional British pub names," Bryson explained, "and led to a profusion of bland corporate makeovers."
