Now housed in the Fry Art Gallery, Saffron Walden, these scrapbooks, described by Edward Bawden himself as a ‘mass of ancient rubbish’, are in fact a vast and intriguing collection of Christmas cards, letters, cuttings, photographs and drawings. With reproductions of pages from all five scrapbooks and notes on the ‘scraps’ and the people mentioned, this volume is the closest thing we have to an autobiography of one of the finest, but most reclusive British artist-designers of the 20th century.