Welcome
Heron Books took flight earlier in 2025 from our original home in The Clifton Arcade.
Find us in our new(ish) heronry at 7a Regent Street, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4HW.
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-Saturday: 9.30am-5.30pm
Sunday: 11am-4pm
7a Regent Street
Clifton, Bristol
BS8 4HW
0117 401 1717
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News
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Through a Stein Darkly – 17 April 2026
On returning to Finsbury Park from postings with the RAF in Egypt, Kenya and Cyprus, a young man, short of cash, pawned his Rolleicord camera for £5. He had bought it with his life savings in Aden, Yemen, ‘one of those twin reflex cameras that you hold up to your chest and look down into’…
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Do Look Now – 10 April 2026
The world has gone crooked and turned upside down. Perhaps so many times in history and in my lifetime that one wonders: how do we recognise the right way up? How does love endure? How does family? At the beginning of Crooked Cross, devoted brother and sister, Helmy and Lexa, decorate the Christmas tree with…
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The Easter Parade – 3 April 2026
Vernice and Annie are getting out. Vernice is bound for college in Atlanta – all very proper and with the approbation of the good people of Honeysuckle, Louisiana. Annie for Memphis, without a goodbye and as fast as her possibly-boyfriend’s erratic car will allow. Born in 1941 within days of each other, they have been…
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Oil, blood and… jam? – 27 March 2026
It has been a slick week in books. At Accidental Graphic Novel/Memoir Club we discussed Ducks, Kate Beaton’s depiction of two years in the Canadian oil sands. I have been reading Blood Will Flow, Alex Perry’s investigation into a vast oil and gas compound in Mozambique and the terrorist attack there in March 2021, as…
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Unexpected Guests – 20 March 2026
Inspired by Natalia Shaloshvili’s Bear Worries, in which Bear, known to and beloved by us already from her previous book, Bear, (it’s about a bear) is enjoying a cookie until it occurs to him that it might be the last cookie, I had resolved to write this week of anxieties, concerns, the things that keep…
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The Hero of a Heron – 13 March 2026
Dear Reader,* The hero of Elizabeth McCracken’s novel – it’s not a memoir, definitely not; she is clear and unfailingly witty about that; if you want to debate this it won’t be on her time – has very short and very wide feet. She is a twin, she is short, has demanding hair with great…