Heron Books

Independent Bookshop Week is flying by far too rapidly, fortunately leaving us with a mountain of books which will stand the test of time. Our partnership with Foundry Editions has taken us from Paris to Nicosia to Palestine, from Benidorm to the Villa Borghese and into the dark underbelly of Heron Books, that Narnia of the lower ground floor where we gathered on Wednesday to hear from Chiara Valerio, author of The Little I Knew, a brilliant depiction of a small community in which everyone knows each other’s behaviour and routines though not their motivations. We were joined also by Ailsa Wood, who translated The Little I Knew, and Richard…

What has a book ever inspired you to do?To plant a Sara van Fleet rose? Climb the Cairngorms? Run away to sea?Perhaps to bake peach cobbler? To make the perfect martini? To drink fewer martinis?*To go gently, look closely, sit quietly, write a diary, send letters?To howl at the moon? Protest? Rage?Set up a bookshop?**Film a video tribute?Chase after an author to tell them that you love them and gush about their Thomas Hardy-esque writing?*** In Steve Page’s case, the answer is: to write songs. Join us at 5pm in the shop tomorrow, Saturday, to enjoy the result. We are very excited to kick off Independent Bookshop Week with our…

BS8 may be beset by storms but I am sipping a brandy sour, curling my toes about delicate shells, toying with Reggie Kray’s cigarette lighter, and shaking sand from my hair. My nose is sunburnt. My vision hazy. The sky is the unlikely colour of Fanta and beneath it the sea invites all without the promise of release. This from the safety of the shop of course – whilst wearing two jumpers and indulging in nothing stronger than tea* – as I prepare for Independent Bookshop Week and our partnership with the publisher Foundry Editions. All of Foundry’s books are set around the Mediterranean and translate works previously unpublished in…

Leave the Trees, Please is the polite but firm message of Benjamin Zephaniah’s picture book, published posthumously and featuring a simple poem pulsing with life. Melissa Castrillon’s illustrations are crowded with detail: amongst the oak leaves, birds flit, squirrels bound, caterpillars squirm and ladybirds pootle. Acorns abound. Grasses wave and flowers flourish about the roots. In his book, Renaturing, James Canton demonstrates how this picture can be one we all recognise and enjoy. From planting wildflowers in a window box to creating a pond in even the smallest garden to leaving lawns unmown, he shows the difference we can make if we all act. Renaturing rather than rewilding is the…

Omar El Akkad began writing One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This after 7 October 2023. The book was published in February this year. He writes, ‘Words exist only in hindsight; time passes over and around them like water along a canyon floor. In the year or so between when I write these words and when they are published, perhaps so many innocent people will have been killed, so many mass graves discovered, that it will not be so controversial to state plainly what is plainly known. But for now we argue, in this part of the world, the part not reduced to rubble, about how words make…

‘What’s the theme this week?’Books were piling up on the desk. Twelve Post-War Tales, The Deserters, Allies At War, Shrapnel Boys…‘War,’ I said cheerily.Except perhaps it wasn’t. Isn’t. I picked up Graham Swift’s Twelve Post-War Tales and turned again to the opening story in which a British serviceman applies to a German government department to find out what happened to his relatives during the second world war. The British soldier’s family were German-Jewish. The German official whom he meets had been a soldier and a prisoner of war. Both men’s parents were killed by ‘the other side,’ though they mean different things by that. The British man has not applied…

I took a risk a few days ago, left my column of berets intact and donned a straw boater. From inside, the weather looked right: birds able to land without trouble, trees swaying gently. The wind swept the hat from my head the moment I was near the river. There was that laughing instant when it seems one will easily snatch it from the air and then, triumphant, look around as if to say, ‘that was close. Did you see?’ and a passerby will nod and smile, point even, in a silent reply of ‘good catch!’ But another gust and it was off. Inevitable. The boater and its burgundy ribbon…

Blake continues to swirl and explode in my thoughts, thanks to Philip Hoare’s latest book. Add to that that recent days have been bathed in sunflower light, that it may actually be warm enough to melt a clock, that I have been reading Nick Makoha’s poetry collection about Jean-Michel Basquiat* and that we have not one but two events with art historian Franny Moyle coming up and it seems that we need to expand the art section. With my unbiased and well-honed eye, I am quite confident in claiming that my six-year-old niece is an artistic genius. She drew a picture of me in the old shop which nods to…

Were I to descend to the depths of Dante’s Inferno or to find myself in Milton’s wild Eden, were I to travel in time to the Library of Alexandria when it was at its most well-stocked and revered (i.e. pre-Julius Caesar accidentally setting fire to it – seriously Julius, smoke outside), were I merely to pop to Tate Britain, I should like Philip Hoare to be my guide. Not because I think he would know the way through these places, any more than I. Judging by his exceptional writing, he does not move linearly or chronologically. I just think he would know everyone we met. He would pull a scroll…

I’ve been enjoying Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb. For a man named Lamb, he sure seems concerned about keeping livestock in their place. (See also: a laboured joke about him being on the lam, since he lives an itinerant lifestyle travelling between jobs in his wagon and living on site for as long as the hedge needs him.)*   His book about restoring hedgerows through traditional techniques and rejuvenating the habitats of so much wildlife is gentle and kind, though the work itself is back-breaking (not to mention cold – he requires lots of tea and hefty spoonsful of peanut butter…