The shop will be shut on
Christmas Day
Boxing Day
New Year's Day
otherwise our opening hours are as usual.
Happy Christmas and very best wishes for 2019!
Welcome to The Woodstock Bookshop
The shop opened in May 2008 and is on the main road in Woodstock, just next to the bus stop. We can supply most books to order by the next day and have several thousand books in stock: to order books ring or email the shop. We have a large selection of children's books and are happy to advise and recommend. We can also supply second-hand and out-of-print titles. We offer discounts for school orders and for book clubs and have a free local delivery service.
We were on the regional shortlist for Independent Bookshop of the Year in 2009, 2013 and 2017, and listed in the Independent's Top 50 UK Bookshops.
BOOK GROUPS AND BOOKSHOP TALKS
are both suspended during the pandemic. We hope to start again as soon as it is safe to do so.
WOODSTOCK POETRY FESTIVAL
The bookshop started and runs Woodstock Poetry Festival, a completely independent festival that has now been running for 8 years.
The Woodstock Literature Society also holds an excellent series of monthly talks - do visit their website for further details.
Twitter: @WoodstockBooks
Monday, 24 December 2018
Friday, 30 November 2018
Wednesday, 22 August 2018
Woodstock Poetry Festival 9-11 November 2018
Here it is! The programme for this year's Woodstock Poetry Festival, our seventh. Booking is now open - please note, tickets can be bought for each separate event or, if you plan to attend several events, you can buy a festival ticket for the whole weekend.
Friday
9 November
7pm Wendy
Cope reads from her latest
collection, Anecdotal
Evidence – poems
about childhood, friends, love and growing older: 'Wendy Cope is
without doubt the wittiest of contemporary English poets, and says a
lot of extremely serious things' - Rowan Williams. £10
8.30pm Kayo
Chingonyi - Unfortunately Kayo is no longer able to read at this year's festival.
Saturday
10 November
12pm Niall
Munro, director
of Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre, introduces three poets published by
ignitionpress,
the poetry pamphlet press established by the Centre in 2017. Mary
Jean Chan's
A
Hurry of English
was the Poetry Book Society's Summer Pamphlet Choice; her first full
collection is published by Faber next year. Natalie
Whittaker's
first pamphlet is Shadow
Dogs.
Belinda
Zhawi
was a 2015/16 London Laureate and the 2016/17 Institute of
Contemporary Arts Associate Poet. Her debut pamphlet is Small
Inheritances.
£6
2.30 pm
Christopher Reid – Old
Toffer's Book of Consequential Dogs.
A
'companion volume' to T S Eliot's Book
of Practical Cats,
discussed by Eliot and written at the request of the Eliot estate,
Old
Toffer's Book
celebrates a variety of dogs in similar spirit. Christopher Reid is a
former poetry editor at Faber and the author of many books of poems.
Come and meet Flo the Philosophical Foxhound, Frazzlesprat, who'd
rather be a cat, and other consequential dogs. Family
event, followed by tea. £5
4pm Liz
Berry & Esther Morgan.
The
Republic of Motherhood, Liz
Berry's
first
collection since Black
Country,
sings of the rawness and joy of new motherhood.
Esther
Morgan's
fourth book, The
Wound Register,
explores her family's response to her great grandfather's death at
the Somme & her own experience of motherhood. £10
6pm
James Harpur & John F. Deane. John F. Deane
founded Poetry Ireland and the Dedalus Press. Dear
Pilgrims uncovers
a map of spiritual pathways, both external and internal.
James
Harpur's
The
White Silhouette meditates
on the divine, and explores pilgrimage and loss.
Both
poets are members of Aosdana, established by the Arts Council to
honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the
arts in Ireland. £10
7.30pm
Treelines:
launch
of the fourth
anthology
selected by Janie Hextall & Barbara McNaught, who brought you
Washing
Lines, Shorelines
&
Strings of Pearls
– this time, poems about trees, woods & orchards; introduced by
Esther
Morgan. £5
Sunday
11 November
3.30pm Sean O'Brien &
Jamie McKendrick address
timely and contemporary issues in their new collections. Europa,
Sean O'Brien's
ninth collection, looks at the shared heritage of European identity;
Anomaly,
the
seventh collection from poet and translator Jamie
McKendrick, tackles
interconnectedness.
£10
5.30pm Isabel
Galleymore, Abigail Parry & Imtiaz Dharker.
Isabel Galleymore's
first full-length collection, Significant
Other,
is published next year. Jinx
is Abigail
Parry's
first book: 'These
are outstanding poems' – Jo Shapcott; Imtiaz
Dharker won
the Queen Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014
and her
latest book is Luck
is the Hook:
‘If
there were to be a World Laureate, then for me the role could only be
filled by Imtiaz Dharker.’ - Carol Ann Duffy.
£10
7.30pm
Jenny Lewis of The Poets House,
Oxford, will introduce open mic, the
popular platform for local and unpublished poets, following the
launch of Gilgamesh
Retold, her re-telling
of the world's oldest poem, composed in Mesopotamia four millenia
ago. Open mic is open to all but should be booked in
advance. £5
Tickets
and information: 01993 812760 or info@woodstockbookshop.co.uk
Festival
ticket giving entry to all events - £60, children
and students half price
Tea and cakes are included in the price of all afternoon
events
Friday's readings are held in St Mary Magdalene Church
Saturday and Sunday readings take place upstairs in
Woodstock Town Hall
Saturday and Sunday readings take place upstairs in
Woodstock Town Hall
Tuesday, 14 August 2018
Gordon Giltrap - Friday 5 October, 7.30pm
An Evening with Gordon Giltrap to celebrate the launch of his biography
Friday 5 October, 7.30pm, Woodstock Social Club (44 Oxford St, Woodstock OX20 1TT)
Tickets £10 from The Woodstock Bookshop.
We are holding an unusual book launch on Friday 5th October when composer and guitar legend Gordon Giltrap comes to Woodstock Social Club to celebrate his new biography, Perilous Journey. Gordon will discuss his life with author Steve Pilkington and will also play solo guitar. Heartsong, a three-track single, will be released the same date.
Friday 5 October, 7.30pm, Woodstock Social Club (44 Oxford St, Woodstock OX20 1TT)
Tickets £10 from The Woodstock Bookshop.
We are holding an unusual book launch on Friday 5th October when composer and guitar legend Gordon Giltrap comes to Woodstock Social Club to celebrate his new biography, Perilous Journey. Gordon will discuss his life with author Steve Pilkington and will also play solo guitar. Heartsong, a three-track single, will be released the same date.
Thursday, 3 May 2018
10 years ago today
10 years ago today - it was a bank holiday Saturday, May 3 2008 - I opened the doors of The Woodstock Bookshop and my first customer came in at 9.30 on the dot. Did we have a book on edible flowers? I had thought of many books we should stock but that wasn't among them. The order haunted me for weeks - the book was about to be printed, not yet printed, printing postponed. From time to time the customer rang, asking what was happening, where the book was. It was not the most auspicious start!
But that first day was tremendous. Person after person came in, stood by the door with widespread arms, saying 'Welcome to Woodstock!' - and they also bought books. They have continued to buy books and to welcome the shop and support the monthly talks and the poetry festival we started in 2011. We ran a series of talks in the old skittle alley by The White Horse pub at Stonesfield - Writers at the White Horse, which sadly came to an end when the pub turned the skittle alley into a house. We worked closely with Andy Morgan who organised 100 Wootton Village Hall Talks, and our tenth anniversary talk is taking place in the splendidly appointed Wootton Village Hall next week on May 11. We have run book groups in local primary schools and several book groups in the shop too. We have a thriving poetry group - reading poems together, not writing them.
There have been so many high points it is not possible to include them all. One was when Henning Mankell came with the BBC World Book Club and we all packed St Mary's Church while he talked about his work. Another was when the shop window (and every conceivable spare wall inside the shop, too) was filled with poems and illustrations by children from Woodstock Primary School. The support of local writers has been heartening and the Woodstock Poetry Festival has flourished thanks to the support of all the poets living in and around Oxford and to musicians Mick Henry and Nick Hooper, without whom we wouldn't have had last year's tremendous finale to the festival when Peggy Seeger joined Bernard O'Donoghue and Nick Hooper's band for an unforgettable evening at Woodstock Social Club.
Finally, I would like to thank Janie, Merle and Nikki, who run the shop when I am away and offer sound advice when I am around. You keep things going.
But that first day was tremendous. Person after person came in, stood by the door with widespread arms, saying 'Welcome to Woodstock!' - and they also bought books. They have continued to buy books and to welcome the shop and support the monthly talks and the poetry festival we started in 2011. We ran a series of talks in the old skittle alley by The White Horse pub at Stonesfield - Writers at the White Horse, which sadly came to an end when the pub turned the skittle alley into a house. We worked closely with Andy Morgan who organised 100 Wootton Village Hall Talks, and our tenth anniversary talk is taking place in the splendidly appointed Wootton Village Hall next week on May 11. We have run book groups in local primary schools and several book groups in the shop too. We have a thriving poetry group - reading poems together, not writing them.
There have been so many high points it is not possible to include them all. One was when Henning Mankell came with the BBC World Book Club and we all packed St Mary's Church while he talked about his work. Another was when the shop window (and every conceivable spare wall inside the shop, too) was filled with poems and illustrations by children from Woodstock Primary School. The support of local writers has been heartening and the Woodstock Poetry Festival has flourished thanks to the support of all the poets living in and around Oxford and to musicians Mick Henry and Nick Hooper, without whom we wouldn't have had last year's tremendous finale to the festival when Peggy Seeger joined Bernard O'Donoghue and Nick Hooper's band for an unforgettable evening at Woodstock Social Club.
Finally, I would like to thank Janie, Merle and Nikki, who run the shop when I am away and offer sound advice when I am around. You keep things going.
Thursday, 26 April 2018
Now we are 10! Come and celebrate at Wootton Village Hall
Now we are 10! An evening of Fact and
Fiction: Carys Davies and Julie Summers,
11 May, Wootton Village Hall,
7.30pm
We would love you to come and celebrate the
bookshop’s 10th anniversary at Wootton Village Hall, where we have sold books
for so many of the Wootton Village Hall talks. The evening will comprise two
short talks – the first about a very special first novel, published on 3 May
(the date the bookshop opened its doors in 2008), and the second a welcome
return to Wootton by Julie Summers, this time to tell us about Blenheim during
the war.
Carys Davies has previously published two volumes of
outstanding short stories and won the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short
Story Award. She will be discussing West, her first novel. Recently she was interviewed on Radio 4's Open Book and you can hear that here.
Julie
Summers will talk about her latest book, Our Uninvited Guests - the secret
lives of Britain's country houses 1939-45, which includes a section on
Blenheim Palace.
This is a celebration of the shop's 10th
birthday and an opportunity for some of the shop’s many customers to get to know
each other. During the past ten years we have held many talks and six poetry
festivals. The bookshop has been shortlisted three times for independent
bookseller of the year and made it to the Independent’s Top 50 bookshops in the
country. None of this would have been possible without our customers and your
support and we would like to say a very big thank you to you all.
Entry (at £5) includes a glass of wine; and
wine and sandwiches will be served following the talks. Please book in advance
by ringing or emailing The Woodstock
Bookshop.
Wednesday, 4 April 2018
How do you get your child to read books?
I love this. It's so true, too - how often do adults sit and read in front of their children? I remember once travelling by train with two of my younger children - as we pulled in to the station the woman opposite bent forward and said, 'I just wanted to say how much I admire the way all three of you have been reading for the whole journey.' The children were a bit puzzled - what else would they have been doing!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)