YORK has a duty to preserve and enhance its heritage for future generations, says best-selling writer Bill Bryson.

Mr Bryson, pictured, originally from Iowa in the United States, spent several years living in North Yorkshire.

Now a Norfolk resident, he returned to give a speech to the Institute of Historic Building Conservation's annual conference at Temple Anderson Hall.

Before the address, he told the Evening Press: "A city like York is really beautiful, and you have a responsibility to make it more beautiful.

"You have a fabulous, world class city, and if you live in a place like York you have a responsibility to put up first rate architecture.

"Britain has a fantastic inheritance that everybody alive gets to enjoy, and so we do have responsibilities to pass that on," he said. "These things are really, really important and it is sad to see them taken for granted."

Mr Bryson, said too many of our 17,000 listed buildings are at risk from neglect. "These are buildings of national importance, and they are falling down because there is not the funding or the will to save them."

Updated: 11:38 Monday, July 11, 2005