Welcome
Heron Books, Clifton’s only independent bookshop, can be found in the historic Clifton Arcade on Boyce’s Avenue.
The shop stocks a range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, 4000 of them in a carefully planned cosy space. Heron Books offers personal recommendations and the creation of bespoke gift lists for special occasions, and runs events, including a monthly poetry series and several book groups. Where not already on the shelves, books can be ordered for home delivery by Royal Mail and, if you live really nearby, staff can exceptionally cycle over to deliver them personally.
The shop is a welcoming space. We like nothing more than talking about books; if the book in question features a heron, all the better.
Opening Hours
Monday-Friday: 10am-5:30pm
Saturday: 9am-6pm
Sunday: 11am-4pm
Unit 5, The Clifton Arcade
Boyce’s Avenue
Bristol, BS8 4AA
0117 431 0616
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News
Loitering With Herons – 07/09/2024
Dear Reader, ‘All stories are true.Some would disagree.All narrators are Cretan liars.’ – My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss Last week I was mesmerised by finding Gwen John everywhere, building a portrait of a portrait artist from fiction, biography and poetry. The possibilities of writing shone. I thought about how so many of the…
A Cover Story – 31/08/2024
I do not know if our recent Rainer Maria Rilke event, celebrating Martyn Crucefix’s translation of and decades of work committed to the poet, was the cause of my returning to God’s Little Artist by Sue Hubbard, a poetry collection about Gwen John. Rilke and John became friends in Paris in the early twentieth century.…
Father Heron – 24/08/2024
Permit me sentimentality this week – it is after all a bank holiday and sentimentality the bank holiday of cynicism* – for it was my father’s seventieth birthday a few days ago and, between libations, there has been a little time to grow misty-eyed about Mr Moss. To him, I owe my love of two-tone…
Turn Over a New Leaf – 17/08/2024
The earth converses herewith the attentive heavens;memory overwhelms heramongst these noble mountains. Sometimes she seems surprisedthat we listen so well—then she reveals her whole lifeand has no more to tell. From The Valaisian Quatrains by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Martyn Crucefix. We will welcome Martyn to the shop this evening to hear him read…
The Heron Test – 11/08/2024
Jellyfish Have No Ears is a title it is hard to resist. My fingers had pressed the order button before I had processed what the novel may be about. When it arrived, I met a character in No Man’s Land, a woman whose lifelong deafness has grown suddenly worse but who is not deaf enough…
Messing About in Books – 03/08/2024
Dive in with Deborah Levy. Join John Cheever. Take a plunge At the Pond. It’s time to linger at the pool with David Hockney, to take to the sea, should Neptune allow it, to delve into the depths with Martin MacInnes or just roam By the River. No need to ask Emma Cline’s creation: The…