Category: book shops
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Is your bookshop hiding anything from you?
In the last few weeks, Hannah Barnes’ new book, Time to Think has been eagerly awaited. Anxious parents are concerned about schools being told to keep secrets from them, and about what their children are learning about sex and gender on TikTok. In political circles, the existence or otherwise of ‘innate gender identity’ is a…
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Come on in, it’s what you’ve been dreaming of…?
It sets off as a second person narrative, and doesn’t give you a name. He’s wading through a typical day which may or may not be the same as yours, but you’ll relate to the wading. And then something weird happens. I think everyone from H G Wells to David Nobbs has written this story…
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Earlyworks Press and Circaidy Gregory Press have left the Creative Media Centre
But they have not disappeared! This is a catch-all message for anyone I didn’t manage to notify individually (sorry!). The press is still running, and the books are still available but we will no longer be using the Creative Media Centre address. For now, if you need to get in touch with me, or have…
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I’m on strike – Cormoran Strike
Lethal White by Robert Galbraith If anyone asks, I don’t like detective novels – same way I don’t like spy novels. For one thing they’re menz stories set in a menz world, however many dynamic women you put in them (yes, yes, I saw all the innovative series about females acting like the eternal private…
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The Good, the Bad and the Greedy
Go on, ban more things! Bad News for Labour Someone tried to launch a book at Waterstones in Brighton during the 2019 Labour conference. The shop cancelled the launch. That was all I knew about the book at the time but, as soon as I got home, I marched into my local indie bookshop and…
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Under-rated heroes and forgotten wives
Happy anniversary, Gustav and Isobel Holst A guest post by author Philippa Tudor Fame and fleeting, modest fortune Aspiring but not-yet-famous composer Gustav von Holst and Isobel Harrison were married on 22 June 1901. It was a quiet wedding in Fulham Register Office (a former workhouse), witnessed by Isobel’s brother and Gustav’s aunt, who had…
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Book signing at Thaxted
What is the best way of launching a new biography in Covid-19 times? As 26 March 2022 would have been the birthday of Isobel Holst (born in 1876), singing in the Dulwich Choral Society concert on that day, with a programme featuring works by her husband Gustav and daughter Imogen, as well as by their…
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The beginning of a lifetime’s work?
A guest post by Philippa Tudor I first encountered Holst’s music through singing his beautiful 8-part Ave Maria as a teenager, and knew that he had taught at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich – where I live – but I never got round to discovering more until 2012, when I ordered a secondhand copy…
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Confessions of an Airline Pilot – Why Planes Crash
Incorporating Tales from the Pilot’s Seat Guest post from Terry Tozer Most will think of poor maintenance, bad weather, old aircraft among other obvious reasons, yet none of these reasons are common; it is more subtle than that. Could airlines be delivering the same awful standards that we experience in other areas of life? Could…
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Three poems find sanctuary
You too can be Battersea Poetry Home. It’s amazing the treasures you can rescue from potential oblivion, and give sanctuary to in your own head. When you pick up a poetry book and find something you love, ideas, images and phrases take root. You have enriched yourself, as well as rescuing a book that might…
Kay Green 