The company behind Moleskine notebooks – the original, unbranded versions of which were a perennial favourite of Chatwin's – is to float on the Italian stock exchange. Despite being touted as the notebooks of choice for Picasso, Chatwin and Hemingway, the modern moleskine is really a marketing construct – the company behind them took a generic notebook design, increased the production values and wove a romantic narrative around the result. And, frankly, all power to them, for, at the end of the day, they are still really rather fine notebooks and deserve their success – though I do tend to think that the company owes the Chatwin estate a debt of gratitude.

More on the floatation from Reuters here.

Notebooks and other items from Bruce Chatwin's archive on display at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.