Independent Booksellers' Week, Woodstock (29 June - July 6)

We have three events during Independent Booksellers' Week - a nationwide celebration of what used to be called bookshops but are now often known as 'Indies'...Maybe to make them appear hip and happening and not a dying breed. We are, naturally, very much alive and have arranged three very different events plus a week-long promotion - not only are we holding our first ever sale, but every book you buy here (including sale books) entitles you to enter our draw for a £20 book token. The entries will be put into a hat and the winner will be drawn at Saturday's talk about Kenya's Happy Valley. I am also taking author Natasha Farrant into a school on Friday 5th July to talk about her book After Iris - look out for it, it's perfect for anyone aged 9-90, rather like a children's version of Barbara Trapido's Brother of the More Famous Jack. 

Wednesday 3 July, 7pm, Woodstock Methodist Church - George Monbiot. The environmentalist and author is talking about his most recent book Feral:
'We live, as Monbiot laments, in a world where many of us encounter nature no more closely than when feeding the ducks, and ‘the greatest trial of strength and ingenuity we face is opening a badly designed packet of nuts’... Monbiot believes that an encounter with the wild serves a spiritual need. In rewilding our surroundings we also rewild ourselves...There’s a good case to be made, he says, that a lot of British flora grows the way it does because it is historically adapted to being browsed by the straight-tusked elephant, last seen hereabouts 115,000 years ago. Isn’t that remarkable? He says, somewhat ruefully: ‘I have seen no discussion about the reintroduction of elephant to Europe, though I would like to start one.’ Me too!' - Sam Leith, Spectator

'Many will disagree, perhaps violently, with the basic premise of Feral. But as a passionate polemic, it could not be more rigorously researched, more elegantly delivered, or more timely.' - Philip Hoare, Telegraph

Thursday 4 July, 7pm - James Harpur
James Harpur is making a rare appearance in the UK from his home in West Cork. Winner of the 1995 National Poetry Competition and the 2009 Michael Hartnett Prize, he will be reading from Angels and Harvesters, his fifth Anvil Press collection and a Poetry Society Recommendation.

‘The heavenly saturation of earthly beauties ... produces shimmering results in Harpur’s book.’ Poetry London‘Harpur is always sure of his direction and takes us there in the company of his considerable poetic gifts, commanding our attention all the way. He comprehends the mystic without being mystical.’ Irish Times
‘James Harpur's poetry plays in the spaces between light and darkness, vision and shadow ... there is a deceptive clarity, an almost translucent surface to the poems which belies their complexity and ambition. These are poems in search of - and in response to - the numinous, the sacred, but they never settle for easy pieties or shortcuts.’  PBS

Saturday 6 July, 6pm, Woodstock Methodist Church - Juliet Barnes
Juliet lives in Kenya and is over here to celebrate the launch of her book The Ghosts Of Happy Valley which digs into the sex and scandal of aristocratic colonial Kenya and shows how modern Africa has grown over the remains.