Publication of the trade edition is now 16 November. Supporters editions will arrive in advance.

Here are links to Scraps podcasts.......a series of talks with the writers and travellers who have helped create Scraps.

the first is with Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet and one of the most travelled of all writers.

scraps-of-wool.blubrry.net/

itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast…

Plans are well ahead for trade publication for the Christmas 2017 market with my generous and patient Supporters personal editions, launch party, travel writing lunches and other activities in the autumn.

Thank you all so very much for making this possible.

Please let me have ideas/comments on the cover design.

Scraps is being edited now. (No doubt the editor is grimacing at my errors as I write this). It will be distributed by Penguin Random House in partnership with Unbound as a Christmas book for 2017. The 'Supporters' edition will be a better bound, finer looking hardback that will not be available to the trade. This can still be bought on the Unbound site.

I am still receiving suggestions for the…

You will want to know where the book is and when you will get it.

It is all but ready in manuscript form* and Unbound seem to be pleased with it.

I can quote their comments without embarrassment since my role is no more than that of the easel for the artwork.

"Scraps of Wool is more than just an anthology of travel writing. It is a rare and precious record of a whole school of remarkable…

We have a manuscript with much more content than we need. It is being sent soon to our Editorial advisers for their comments. It is still all copyright protected as we are still going through that tortuous process. Authors (those still alive) are all delighted to be included but it takes unmentionable amounts of time to get the permissions agreed. In one case I have waited for four months just for…

News of Scraps of Wool:

Scraps is moving along well. Soon I will send a long list to our Editorial team and hope that they have time to look at some or all of it of it and give their views. Then we will have a final selection.

Meanwhile I need some help with Hemingway. Surely this collection of the inspiring, the memorable and the entertaining in travel literature should include something from…

We are close to the end of the research part of the creation of the book. I have so many wonderful and entertaining passages to sift and select. They have to be passages that stand well on their own. Some books just do not lend themselves to extracting representative pieces; others seem to be made for it (like the difference between Wagner and Puccini). I am also very much influenced by the choices…

Please come if you can and bring your own favourite passages of travel books or suggestions for books that should be included. Mr Fogg's say please call 0207 036 0608 to reserve a place; or email residence@mr-foggs.com.

It is in Bruton Lane, just off Berkeley Square.

Scraps of Wool

An Evening with Bill Colegrave & Mr Fogg

11th January 2016   6.01pm talk followed by 6.31 Q&A

Mr Fogg’s Residence    www.mr-foggs.com

15 Bruton Lane, London W1J6TD   Tel: 020 7 036 0608

This January, as part of their explorer series, Mayfair bar Mr Fogg’s will team up with Bill Colegrave, the adventurous and fascinating travel writer, who has ventured to more…

Scraps of Wool is looking good with 66% subscribed today and significant amounts also committed to come in soon. Thank you all so very much for your support. This crowdfunding is new to most of us, but really is the way that publishing used to be before the big battallion publishers took over for most of the 20th Century. Now its all on-line rather than in the coffee houses. The reader is back in…

Thank you all my Supporters. For years the concept was a chrysalis into which ideas were fed. Now with your fertilisation, the wings are grown and it will fly.

The crowdfunding process has drawn in so many new editorial contributions, that now there is little room left for me in this shed. The richness of the contributions is the reward for the work.

Some of the ideas are new to me: 

Nicholas…

One pile to left of the hat is done.....rest are pending but filled with notes from Supporters and contributors. This is less than 30% of the shed library.......lots of work, but very rewarding.

with........

Alexander Frater, author of Chasing the Monsoon and Beyond the Blue Horizon, who was also for 12 years Chief Travel Writer at The Obsever and won the Travel Writer of the Year Award 3 years in a row.

and one (depending on dates) of :

Jason Elliott, whose book, An Unexpected Light about his time in Afghanistan with Mujahdeen and his return 10 years later, has been recommended…

......that was the message I got back from Tim Mackintosh-Smith  (Travels with a Tangerine ; Landfalls; Travels of Ibn Battuta and others) when I reminded him to send in his choices for Scraps of Wool.

OK, Tim....I can wait.

So much of Scraps of Wool is created by writers and other correspondents revealing the passages that have inspired them. Often it is one of the very first books that they read.... for example....Jan Morris contacted me yesterday (I hope, Jan, you do not mind me relating this tale of our talk, but it was so endearing as well as entertaining).

First she said she did not like travel books and that…

Scraps of Wool is more of a celebration of travel literature than an anthology..... a celebration of what it has meant to us, the readers.

Scraps of Wool is not simply a listing directory of travel writers with little exemplar extracts. These have been published before. I want a book in which each extract is a discreet anecdote, episode, passage, that impresses on its own....that you could read…