Footbridge to Enchantment [author's original typescript]

[ff] 4 ff 139. Full length authorial typescript of Tranter's country notebook with a manuscript title page. Typed by Tranter on the rectos of 143 leaves with a title page in which the author has misspelt his own title: 'Footbridge to Enchatment - by Nigel Tranter or Nigel's Bridge to Enchantment' - a sub-title which did not appear on the finished work. Minor authorial corrections throughout. The typescript is bound with metal spirals through punched holes and loosely held in a green Twin Cobra folder with an illustration of the work apparently from a magazine taped to the upper cover. The main text is preceded by what the author calls: 'Proposed Preface to Nigel's Bridge to Enchantment'. Nigel Tranter's normal method of composition was described in his Guardian obituary thus: 'Each morning he would leave his house in East Lothian and begin a long walk... In stout boots, flat cap and sensible tweeds, he looked just like any other bird-watcher but for one oddity: in his hands he carried small sheets of paper, protected by a polythene bag in inclement weather. By the time he returned home some 12 miles later, he would have completed another 1,000 words of his next book. Then, with few corrections, the work would be typed up on a venerable Imperial typewriter.' Given that these pieces all started life in The Scot's Magazine this may well be in effect Tranter's typescript/ manuscript of the book inspired by the bridge across Aberlady Bay close to his home.