Fifteen years ago I began to work on a book about Disney's expansion outside of the US in the 1930s and 1940s. This was really the subtext of Disney's Grand Tour. It was also almost virgin territory at the time.

Having faced some serious setbacks in many other directions at the beginning of the year, I decided to re-focus on this project over the past few months.

While I still have no idea of when the book will be written and published, I am glad to share that the research is progressing by leaps and bounds.

This is especially thanks to two wonderful volunteers in New York.

I finally know exactly when Kay Kamen met Walt Disney for the very first time, who put him in touch again with Walt later on and how the July 1, 1932 agreement between Kamen-Blair and Disney was negotiated. I also now know who the second person from the left on this photo is (it is not the publicist Harry Hammond Beall as we believed), and when Kamen travelled around Europe for the first time with his nephew George (and what they did and what they saw).

It took me 20 years to find those answers, but over the past two weeks of intense research they have started pouring in, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

When it is ready, that book will be really, really fun and full of delightful surprises!