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.

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.

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.

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!