Richard Ford in Woodstock

Novelist Richard Ford is coming to Woodstock on November 27 to give a talk about his recent book Canada. Canada is the best novel I have read all year and I also believe it is the best he has written so far. Reviews for Canada have been excellent - just to give you an idea, here are two:

'Canada is blessed with two essential strengths in equal measure — a mesmerizing story driven by authentic and fully realized characters, and a prose style so accomplished it is tempting to read each sentence two or three times before being pulled to the next... Canada is a tale of what happens when we cross certain lines and can never go back. It is an examination of the redemptive power of articulated memory, and it is a masterwork by one of our finest writers working at the top of his form.' New York Times


'Canada is a superlatively good book, richly imagined and beautifully fashioned. Although it is too early to do so, one is tempted to acclaim it a masterpiece. It catches movingly the grinding loneliness at the heart of American life – of life anywhere. As the narrative makes its measured progress, the sadness steadily accumulates, a weightless silt that gets under the eyelids. The final encounter at the close of the book between Dell and Berner is one of the most tenderly drawn scenes in modern literature, and could only have been written by a writer of Richard Ford's empathy, insight and technical mastery.' John Banville, Guardian


We are already taking booking for this talk.

Three Houses, Many Lives

Gillian Tindall gave a fascinating talk on Tuesday about her recent book, focusing mainly on Taynton Vicarage (shown above) as that is the house closest to Woodstock. She had an hour or so to wander round Woodstock before the talk - which she did in spite of the rain - and managed to look at our own Rectory, built in 1982 in the garden of the old Rectory (now known as the Bishop's House) which was built by the legendary Bishop Fell of Oxford in 1686-9. She moved effortlessly from very close study of particular houses and documents to showing how these illustrate changes and events in the country as a whole and she brought individuals and whole communities alive. All her books are exceptional in that way - my favourite is Celestine, the account of a French village.

Independent Booksellers' Week

We had a great talk from Robert Macfarlane to launch Independent Booksellers' Week on Saturday (see Merle, above, who works in the shop, gamely wearing the tee-shirt supplied by Nielsen's to promote the week - and Robert, top, chatting to the long queue of people waiting to have their books signed). Robert spoke about The Wild Places, and how his walks in Dorset with Roger Deakin had influenced him (Deakin, who died a year or so ago, was the author of Waterlog, a swim round Britain, and Notes From Walnut Tree Farm) . He read from different sections of The Old Ways - this is Radio 4's Book of the Week so you can have some idea of what we enjoyed, though it is not read by the author.