Edward Brooke-Hitching is an English author, and a researcher and writer for BBC panel show QI. He is the son of rare book collector and antiquarian dealer Franklin Brooke-Hitching, and a descendant of the printer and bibliographer

William Blades William Blades (5 December 182427 April 1890), English printer and bibliographer, was born at Clapham, London. Career In 1840 he was apprenticed to his father's printing business in London, being subsequently taken into partnership. The ...

, who wrote the history of book preservation ''

The Enemies of Books ''The Enemies of Books'' is a book on biblioclasm and book preservation by the 19th-century bibliophile and book collector William Blades. The book was first published in 1880 and has been republished in different editions in 1881, 1888, 1896, ...

''. Brooke-Hitching was exposed to his father's work through his rare bookshop, and worked for an auctioneer in London before turning to a writing career. His ''Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports'' described 90 obsolete pastimes such as fox tossing, octopus wrestling and

ski ballet Ski ballet is a form of ballet performed on skis. It is very similar to figure skating, combining spins, jumps, and flips in a two-minute routine choreographed to music. It was part of the professional freestyle skiing tours of the 1970s and 1980 ...

. His ''The Phantom Atlas'' describes places which appear on maps but do not exist: the ''Times'' reviewer says that it "shows how places that aren’t there can endure, sometimes for centuries, once a map-maker has inked them in". ''The Sky Atlas'' was shortlisted for the 2019

Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing ...

in the "Illustrated travel book" category and picked as one of the 50 Christmas books of the year by '' The Herald''. In 2007 he directed a short documentary about the Edinburgh-based '' Really Terrible Orchestra''. He appeared on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

's ''

The Museum of Curiosity ''The Museum of Curiosity'' is a comedy talk show on BBC Radio 4 that was first broadcast on 20 February 2008. It is hosted by John Lloyd (producer), John Lloyd (Professor of Ignorance at the University of Buckingham, and later at Solent Unive ...

'' in October 2019. His hypothetical donation to this imaginary museum was "a land grant for 60 acres of land in Poyais", being a document produced by 1820s fraudster

Gregor MacGregor General Gregor MacGregor (24 December 1786 – 4 December 1845) was a Scottish soldier, adventurer, and con man who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territ ...

Selected publications

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References

External links

* * English book and manuscript collectors Year of birth missing (living people) English non-fiction writers Living people {{UK-writer-stub