Edward Brooke-Hitching

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, who wrote the history of book preservation ''The Enemies of Books''.

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. 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 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's ''The Museum of Curiosity'' 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. Provided by Wikipedia