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A collection of the passages, stories and moments that have inspired our finest travel writers and their readers
‘Of all the world’s books, the best stories are to be found between the pages of a passport’
Scraps of Wool will be a classic celebration of the genre, bringing into one volume passages that have enthralled and excited generations of readers. This
is not a reference book, but a book to be read; each piece, a story, a memory, an inspiration.
Scraps of Wool celebrates inspirational travel writing. It has been compiled using the choices of today's greatest living travel writers, plus, via social
media and links with the Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society, with the reading public itself. The crowd funding and the crowd contributing are
working hand in hand. Now Unbound subscribers can also contribute suggestions.
The chosen passages will ring enchanting bells for those who are already converts and be a tasting menu for those who are new to it.
The bedrock for Scraps of Wool is passion…the travellers writing about the places that they love; the adventures that have fulfilled them and they want to
pass on to us.
Authors and others who have contributed their choices include; Dervla Murphy (Full Tilt, Where the Indus is Young, The Island that Dared
and many others), Anthony Sattin (The Pharaoh's Shadow; The Gates of Africa), Alexander Frater (Chasing the Monsoon), Jason Elliot (An Unexpected Light; Mirrors of the Unseen), Justin Marozzi (Baghdad; City of Peace, City of Blood; The Way
of Herodotus), Hilary Bradt (Bradt Guides), Tony Wheeler (Lonely Planet founder), Robin Hanbury Tenison
(Great Explorers; Oxford Book of Exploration), Rory MacLean (Stalin’s Nose), Pico Iyer (the Lady and the Monk, Global
Soul), Sara Wheeler (Terra Incognita; Travels in a Thin Country), Nick Danziger (Danziger’s Travels, Sarah Anderson
(founder The Travel Bookshop, Notting Hill), Rupert McCowan (Director Royal Geographical Society, Hong Kong) Colin Thubron (In Siberia, Behind the Wall, To A Holy Mountain, The Lost Heart of Asia and many more), Artemis Cooper
(biographer of Patrick Leigh Fermor), John Gimlette (Wild Coast), Isabella Tree (Sliced Iguanas), John Keay (Where Men and mountains Meet, Explorers of the Western Himalayas; Eccentric Travellers) and more (see Authors’ Shed for full
list)
“The idea of this book was born when a single paragraph in one of the great travel books sent me to central Asia in 1977, and has been sending me back
ever since. It started with my library but has gown into a far bigger project with the enthusiasm and support of the writers and the public”
Editor, Bill Colegrave
Travel writing is like “...scraps of wool caught on a barbed wire fence that must be collected, spun and woven into fiction in a book.” Jonathan Raban.
More information
Bill Colegrave
I have had a long interest in travel publishing, albeit suppressed under a veneer of banking and finance for many years.
I was publisher of Cadogan Guides, which I bought in 1989 and also a Director of Everyman’s Library. My book, Halfway House to Heaven (Benefactum 2011), tells the story of my expedition to find the source of the River Oxus in the Wakhan Corridor and Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan.
My first ever publishing venture was really based on a whim discussed over a dinner; we created a parody of the Times, called Not The Times, during its year long strike. It was by far the most successful publishing venture I have done and made me think it was all very easy. I know better now.
My travel book library is the only possession that I really treasure and it has helped me to more than 110 countries, with many more to come.
I play a lot of real tennis and petanque; the latter found me friends when I lived in the South of France for six years.
I have three remarkable children, all grown into more interesting people than their father, and Violet, the tiny one, is my first grandchild and was born in February.
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4th August 2018Why is the Times Literary Supplement now my favourite publication?
Written by Horatio Clare, winner of last years' Stanford Travel
Book Award for Down to the Sea in Ships; also Icebreaker
3rd September 2017Scraps of Wool podcasts are launched in preparation for November 16 publication date
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.
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.
24th January 2017Scraps of Wool progress....and another book
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…
29th September 2016Scraps of Wool: what has happened to my book?
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…
29th April 2016Scraps update
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…
12th February 2016Help needed with Hemingway, please.
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…
29th January 2016News of Scraps....
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…
4th January 2016Scraps of Wool evening at Mr Fogg's Mayfair Residence
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.
11th December 2015Scraps talk and drinks at Mr Fogg's Mayfair January 11 2016
Scraps of Wool
An Evening with Bill Colegrave & Mr Fogg
11th January 2016 6.01pm talk followed by 6.31 Q&A
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…
6th November 2015More wings for Scraps of Wool
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…
20th October 2015Scraps of Wool gets wings
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…
26th September 2015when a Shed is really a shed...
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.
25th September 2015We have added a new reward - A workshop for aspirant travel writers @ £250
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…
12th September 2015Sorry to be late with my reply; we are in a war with missiles flying overhead.....
......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.
12th September 2015Jan Morris singing.....
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…
3rd September 2015....how it began...
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…
Kara Colegrave asked:
Where is your favorite place in the world and why?
Bill Colegrave replied:
.... there have been a few times when I have had feelings like Nicolas Bouvier in the passage quoted above...in Afghanistan's Pamirs, in the Hoggar Mountains of Algeria, in Lhasa...and then on the Guidecca in Venice looking back across the lagoon...
Where is your favorite place in the world and why?
.... there have been a few times when I have had feelings like Nicolas Bouvier in the passage quoted above...in Afghanistan's Pamirs, in the Hoggar Mountains of Algeria, in Lhasa...and then on the Guidecca in Venice looking back across the lagoon...