The Woodstock Bookshop

Independent Booksellers' survey

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:51:00 +0000

What Do You Think of Britain’s Bookshops?

As part of Independent Booksellers Week, www.independentbooksellersweek.org.uk , we are taking part in a national consumer research survey asking bookshop customers what they think about books and bookshops. Could you take a couple of minutes to complete the survey below – your feedback will help the Booksellers' Association create a snapshot of consumers’ attitudes to bookshops and you could also win £50 of National Book Tokens!

Here’s the survey link - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/IBW2012 – it should only take a couple of minutes. Many thanks.

Marilynne Robinson

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:59:00 +0000

I went to Blackwells yesterday evening for a talk by Marilynne Robinson, one of the very great American writers. She read from her latest book - When I was a Child I Read Books (a collection of essays) - and from a passage towards the end of Gilead. If you haven't already read Gilead I urge you to try it. You have to read it slowly, like poetry. She read it aloud beautifully and then took questions from the audience, talking about history - 'there is a sense in which our view of reality has narrowed' - and our smugness about the past, our feeling that we can do and understand things so much better now - 'we have to get behind this irrational certainty'. One phrase in particular stood out for me, when she said, 'What the culture becomes depends on what every single member of the culture does.' Read her books!

Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:33:00 +0000

Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2012: Appelfeld said, 'Blooms of Darkness is a work of fiction that includes my personal experience during the Second World War. I wanted to explore the darkest places of human behaviour and to show that even there, generosity and love can survive; that humanity and love can overcome cruelty and brutality.'

Blooms of Darkness is loosely based on Appelfeld's own experiences of the Holocaust as a boy, where he escaped from a prison camp. The novel is told from the perspective of 11-year-old Hugo who is taken in by Mariana, a prostitute, to keep him safe as the Second World War rages around them in the ghetto and Jewish people are sent to concentration camps.

Born in 1932 in what is now Western Ukraine, Appelfeld was deported to a labour camp at Transnistria when he was seven years old. He managed to escape, and was picked up by the Red Army in 1944, making his way to Italy and finally reaching Palestine in 1946, aged 14. These formative years have been the focus of his writing for more than 40 years, during which he has produced over 40 books which have been translated into 25 languages. While Appelfeld grew up speaking German he could not bring himself to write in it citing it as 'the language of the murderers'. Instead, he chooses to write in his 'mother language' of Hebrew which he learned to speak aged 14 and which he praises for its succinctness and biblical imagery.

The six shortlisted titles for the 2012 Prize were:
•Aliceby Judith Hermann, translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo (The Clerkenwell Press)
•Blooms of Darkness by Aharon Appelfeld, translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M Green (Alma Books)
•Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Cindy Carter (Corsair)
•From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (Telegram Books)
•New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani, translated from the Italian by Judith Landry (Dedalus)
•The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon (Harvill Secker)

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize is awarded annually to the best work of contemporary fiction in translation. The prize celebrates an exceptional work of fiction by a living author which has been translated into English from any other language and published in the United Kingdom in 2011.

It is interesting to see how different the two translation prize shortlists are: Diego Marani's New Finnish Grammar is the only book to appear on both lists. I haven't read it yet but customers who have say it is excellent. I have just read How I Lost the War and Down the Rabbit Hole, both from the Oxford-Weidenfeld shortlist - quite different but very haunting and beautifully translated.

Oxford-Weidenfeld shortlist

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:23:00 +0000

The shortlist for the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize has been announced: this is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. The shortlist has been selected by Oxford academics Rebecca Beasley, Ann Jefferson and Freya Johnston, joined by guest judge Marina Warner who is speaking here with Matthew Reynolds on Sunday 27 May with Matthew Reynolds.

John Ashbery for Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud (Carcanet)
Margaret Jull Costa for Seven Houses in France by Bernardo Atxaga (Harvill Secker)
Howard Curtis for How I Lost the War by Filippo Bologna (Pushkin)
Rosalind Harvey for Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (And Other Stories)
Judith Landry for New Finnish Grammar by Diego Marani (Dedalus)
Martin McLaughlin for Into the War by Italo Calvino (Penguin)

The judges said: This year’s entry was both very strong and very numerous, with 102 books being submitted by 44 publishers. Twentieth-century history was a prominent theme, an emphasis which has carried through into our shortlist. Genre fiction, especially crime, was well represented in the entry this year; but there was hardly any drama. Finally, we wish to record our appreciation of the many interesting prefaces and introductions which helped orient our reading of the translations.
The winner will be announced on 7th June at St Anne’s College Oxford. All are welcome to attend this celebration, at which the shortlisted translators will read from their work and Marina Warner will present the prize. The event begins at 6.30pm.

Tower Poetry at the Woodstock Arms

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 11:24:00 +0000

Don Paterson (left) and Christopher Reid chatting to the audience following the reading.

The Woodstock Arms was packed with over 70 people on Friday to hear Don Paterson and Christopher Reid reading their poems. Christopher Reid (Don Paterson's former poetry editor at Faber, who publish both poets) read from A Scattering, the collection about the death of his wife, his Selected Poems and unpublished poems written for a libretto about soldiers during the First World War. We were able to get hold of advance copies of Don Paterson's Selected Poems for the event, not published by Faber until early May - this is a great book, the best possible introduction for anyone new to his works. As Christopher Reid said during the talk, Don Paterson lives in the seventeenth century and produces metaphysical poems. He also produces sonnets - his next collection will, he said, be all sonnets, and he read some unpublished sonnets to us.

We are very grateful to Tower Poetry for collaborating with us on this event: both poets were in Oxford earlier that day with local poet Peter McDonald to select the winners of the annual Tower Poetry Competition, a competition open to 16-18 year olds.

Patrick Gale

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 12:14:00 +0000

Patrick Gale (pictures above, signing books and chatting after his talk) gave such a good reading last night. He talked about how he writes, which is unusual - he lives with each character in turn, rather than writing the book consecutively. The structure of A Perfectly Good Man, his latest novel, is quite fascinating and I can't see how he manages to weave together the different characters and periods so seamlessly, into such a perfect whole. He has had very good reviews for this book - quite rightly. He is one of the most interesting writers, constantly experimenting with different ways of structuring and telling stories. To see a video of Patrick discussing the book click here

Martin Sixsmith

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 12:16:00 +0000

Martin Sixsmith's talk on Russia on Monday was sold out - the Methodist Church was packed with over a hundred people of all ages (as you can see from the photos above, where he is signing books after the talk. The young girls are studying Russian and even had a conversation with him in Russian). He started with some Russian jokes and then spoke very movingly of how writers and musicians coped during the events of the twentieth century. The book is fascinating, highly recommended.

Martin Sixsmith in Woodstock

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:28:00 +0000

Martin Sixsmith will be talking about Russia on Monday March 5th at 7.30pm in Woodstock Methodist Church. Tickets £5 - please ring or email The Woodstock Bookshop to reserve a place.

Martin Sixsmith was the BBC Moscow correspondent for many years, reporting from Moscow at the end of the Cold War and this book was first published to accompany a BBC Radio 4 series marking the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Combining in-depth research with his personal experiences as a BBC Moscow correspondent, Sixsmith tells Russia's full and fascinating story from its foundation in the 10th century till today. Covering politics, music, literature and art, he explores the myths Russians have created from their history, and explains the nation's seemingly split personality as the result of influences that have divided it for centuries. Russia is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complex political landscape of Russia and its place in the modern world:

'My aim in this book and accompanying radio series has been to put the events I witnessed into their proper historical context, to highlight the previous turning points in Russia’s history, those "moments of unruly destiny" when she could have gone either way – down the path of reform that might have made her a liberal democracy, or down the continuing path of autocracy, at times totalitarian, repressive and dictatorial.'

From 1997 to 2002 Martin Sixsmith worked for the British Government as Director of Communications and Press Secretary to Harriet Harman, Alistair Darling and Stephen Byers. He is now a writer, presenter and journalist.

Gillian Clarke

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 12:50:00 +0000

We had a great launch for Washing Lines last Saturday. Janie and Barbara had decked the Methodist Church with washing lines and poetry and the church was full. The photos show Gillian signing books after the reading, and chatting to Janie and her husband Nicholas just before the reading began. Barbara can just be seen on the far left.

Gillian Clarke's reading was wonderful - we have some CDs of her reading her work in case anyone would like a permanent reminder of how well she reads (the recording was not made at our talk so is not exclusively about washing). She began with tribute to the four miners who had just been found, reading an earlier poem in memory of another accident -

Six Bells - 28th June 1960

Perhaps a woman hanging out the wash

paused, hearing something, a sudden hush,

a pulse inside the earth like a blow to the heart,

holding in her arms the wet weight

of her wedding sheets, his shirts. Perhaps

heads lifted from the work of scrubbing steps,

hands stilled from wringing rainbows onto slate,

while below the town, deep in the pit

a rock-fall struck a spark from steel, and fired

the void, punched through the mine a fist

of blazing firedamp. As they died,

perhaps a silence, before sirens cried,

before the people gathered in the street,

before she'd finished hanging out her sheets.

She read a lot from Washing Lines, and from her own work. A treat was to hear unpublished, recent poems, including one just completed that day. She also read Shirt of a Lad, an anonymous poem translated by Tony Conran, which will surely be in a future edition of Washing Lines.

Anthea Bell and Boyd Tonkin

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 10:15:00 +0000

The photos show, from top to bottom, Anthea Bell signing books after her discussion with Boyd Tonkin; with Melissa from Pushkin Press; signing again and with Melissa. The Methodist Church was full (you can see the cross just over Melissa's shoulder). Pushkin Press produce the most beautiful paperback editions of literature in translation and have published many of Stefan Zweig's books, translated by Anthea Bell - for a look at their superb catalgue see here.
The other small publisher whose books we stocked for the evening is Arabia and Haus
publishing, who publish Rafik Schami. Schami was born in Syria but has lived in political exile in Germany since 1970. He is the winner of numerous international prizes and is among Germany's bestselling novelists - Anthea Bell has translated two of his books, The Dark Side of Love and The Calligrapher's Secret, and she picked out the former as one of her favourite translations. Her most recent translation for Haus is The Indies Enterprise by Erik Orsenna which is coming out very soon (we have early copies here - it is a fantastic story of the effects of discovery.

Boyd Tonkin asked excellent questions and, while Anthea was modestly describing her work as craftsmanship, he declared she was like Yehudi Menuhin, a virtuoso able to bring writers to life in another language. We were lucky to hear her.

On 9 October 2011 at the French Institute Anthea Bell will be sharing her passion for translation, and her experience of taking on upfront the most challenging of them all, the very Gallic Asterix!
Book online on http://www.institut-francais.org.uk/bdandcomicspassion/

Christine Holmes novels

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:24:00 +0000

Oxford was recently saddened to hear of the loss of author Christine Holmes. Holmes is probably better known as an historian of Captain Cook and Anglo-Saxon Benson, but she was also a novelist. The Lily & The Crocodile (published in Germany as The Queen’s Physician) is an exuberant read set inside Cleopatra’s royal quarters and beyond. The Song of Deborah, set a thousand years earlier in Palestine, is an intimate tale of two heroic women in the Biblical time before Kings….. Roke Elm is a gem of a modern story set in southern Oxfordshire. This is a truly magical tale of gentle love, and loss, rooted in the very fabric around Benson and the Chilterns. All three novels (in special paperback editions printed for Holmes’s memorial in Oxford) are available from The Woodstock Bookshop at £10 each.

Looking Back - Basil Mitchell

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 10:58:00 +0000

Professor Basil Mitchell, a Woodstock resident for many years, died in June 2011. He had a long and distinguished career as an academic, mainly in Oxford, where he was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, Keble College, Oxford, 1947-67, Emeritus Fellow of Keble, 1981, Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford University, Fellow of Oriel College, 1968-84, and Emeritus Fellow of Oriel, 1984. Before his death he published Looking Back: on faith, philosophy and friends in Oxford (£19.95). It is a fascinating account of his life and philosophy and very well written. If anyone has difficulty getting hold of a copy we are happy to send it out.

Gillian Clarke and Anthea Bell

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:22:00 +0000

The programme for the year's Independent Woodstock Literature Festival is now available and we are hosting two events as part of it:

On Thursday 15 September at 7pm, Anthea Bell, the very distinguished and versatile translator, is being interviewed by Boyd Tonkin (literary editor of the Independent who has a particular interest in translated fiction). Anthea Bell translates from French and German - she is the translator of many children's books, among them the Nicholas books and Asterix - see here. She is also the translator of a wide range of crime and literary fiction including several books for the European crime specialist Bitter Lemon Press, W G Sebald's Austerlitz (for which she won the Independent Foreign Fiction prize) and many Stefan Zweig novels - most recently a new translation of Beware of Pity.

On Saturday 17 September at 6pm, Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales and chair of the judges for this year's T S Eliot prize for poetry, is reading from her own work and also launching Washing Lines, a beautifully produced anthology of poems collected and published by Janie Hextall (who works in the shop) and Barbara McNaught. For an article in The Oxford Times see here.

Tickets (£8) are available by phone from 01865 305305, or from The Feathers Hotel Woodstock, or online at http://www.woodstockliteraryfestival.com/.

Richard Webster

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:06:00 +0000

Very sad news. Richard Webster has died, aged only 60. People who have come to the shop since we started three years ago will remember him well - he worked here for a year or so. I met him soon after I opened because he came in and introduced himself and said that he had thought of opening a bookshop in Woodstock after he stopped running the Southwold Bookshop and moved to Oxford. He hadn't quite got round to it and was rather relieved that I had done it instead, so he could continue to write while coming in to the Woodstock Bookshop and enjoying a stint as a bookseller whenever I went away. He used to call it living vicariously.

He was hugely supportive and I will miss him enormously. Not that he was uncritical. 'Rachel,' he said, shortly after we first met. 'Coming into your bookshop is like trying to read the front page of The Times without any headlines. Have you thought about putting up some labels?' It was great to have someone who believed in me but would also challenge me. 'I see you've been busy again,' he would note, as he came in to the shop after a week or two's absence. Which meant too much stock. 'A bookshop is like a river,' he would explain. 'You need the banks to hold it steady, the occasional big boulder to keep things together (such as the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations or the complete works of Shakespeare) - but the centre should flow freely.' I look around now and see too many books face out hiding other books (Richard would go round whenever he was here making little piles of authors with only the top book face out) and vow to do a clear-out in his memory.

He did his best to promote the shop and to keep me on the right path. He was the one who helped me put together this website and he read it regularly, always emailing me immediately he spotted a spelling mistake or error. He would bring friends in on quiet Sunday afternoons. He made sure the shop opened through a winter of snow, driving in from Hayfield Road whenever I got stuck in Dean and ringing me with reports of weather conditions in Woodstock. He made sticky labels for me because he thought the shop needed them. He was always there, on the end of the phone, for IT crises or to share gossip about the book trade. And we sold a lot of his lovely cards, too. He had been writing a book on Disgust - I wonder how much had been completed at his death.

Bookshop to close

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:50:00 +0000

I have just read with great sadness that the Sandwich Bookshop in Kent is closing after seven years, blaming a rise in internet bookselling, supermarket discounting and the popularity of e-readers. Louise Vance will be shutting the doors to her shop in July. She said: "Like so many independents before us, the odds have been stacked so far against us that it is now just too hard to compete on such an un-level playing field. Competing with the likes of Amazon and the supermarkets, who sell books as loss leaders, the internet in general and now the Kindle, which also only allows books to be purchased from Amazon, has been hard." She also said that business had fallen "dramatically" since March, pointing out this was around the same time as World Book Night.
Independent booksellers are always told that while some shops shut, the 'good' ones survive and even thrive. The Sandwich shop is a very good shop and its closure serves as a warning that even good shops will close in this climate and with such competition. July 4th is Independents' Day, a day to shop locally and support your independent shops - so I hope you will!

Mark Ford and Bernard O'Donoghue

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:03:00 +0000

A very crowded Woodstock Arms

Bernard O'Donoghue signing Farmers Cross after the talk

The Woodstock Arms was full last night, around 80 of us gathered for the reading by Mark Ford (left, above) and Bernard O'Donoghue. Mark Ford read from Six Children, including the title poem, from which I quote the first and last verses:

The first woman I ever got with child wore calico
In Carolina. She was hoeing beans; as a languorous breeze
I caressed her loins, until her hoe lay abandoned in the furrow.
...

Some day, all together, we will stride the open road, wheeling
In an outsized pram my sixth, this broken, mustachioed
Soldier whose wounds I bind up night. His mother I forget.

Bernard O'Donoghue was reading from Farmers Cross - including the poem below:

History

Then they talked together until Dunstan spoke about St Edmund,
as Edmund's sword-bearer told the story to King Aethelstan, when
Dunstan was a young man and the sword-bearer was a very old man.
- Aelfric's preface, The Life of King Edmund

Magie Din Beag, aged four in 1865,
was lifted on to her father's shoulders
at Abraham Lincoln's funeral.
Her father said to her: 'Never forget
That you were at Abraham Lincoln's funeral!'
He said it at the time, she told me, and again
at intervals throughout the rest of his life.
She told it to me in 1956
when I was ten, and said: 'Never forget
that you once knew an old woman
who had been at Abraham Lincoln's funeral
when she was four.' Fifty years ago now;
so what I say to you is: never forget
that you once read something by someone
who said they had known when they were young
someone who said their father told them
they had been to Abraham Lincoln's funeral.

Sadly, I didn't take a camera to Anna Kemp's reading at the library on Saturday - she was lovely with the children, getting them to join in and even to do a little balletic warm-up between readings. If you haven't yet read Dogs Don't Do Ballet, you should - and Fantastic Frankie is brilliant too, in a Roald Dahl-ish style.

Video of Henning Mankell in Woodstock

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 07:10:00 +0000

Karen, the BBC producer, has sent me a link to a short video they filmed of Henning Mankell just before he gave the talk in Woodstock last weekend - see here. It all looks suitably grey and misty.

Salley Vickers talk 14 June

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:14:00 +0000

The Woodstock Literature Society is organising a talk by Salley Vickers on Tuesday 14th June at 8pm in the Church of St Mary Magdalene, Woodstock. Salley Vickers is perhaps best known for Miss Garnet's Angel, her first novel. She has written five other novels and, most recently, Aphrodite's Hat, a collection of short stories.

Tickets for visitors are £8.00 and can be purchased from The Woodstock Bookshop, or by post from Stephanie Bliss, email: blisses@waitrose. Tickets can be reserved by phone and collected at the door if more convenient.

The society is also offering a great deal on half-year membership this year: a ticket for the Vickers talk plus membership for the four autumn lectures will cost just £16.00 compared to £28 if purchased as separate guest tickets. Details of the programme can be found here.

Henning Mankell comes to town

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 31 May 2011 10:44:00 +0000

We had a fabulous afternoon on saturday - the church in Woodstock was packed with around 300 people and the BBC did a superbly professional job on the sound system so everyone heard perfectly. It was fascinating being part of a broadcast - Karen, the producer of the BBC World Book Club, told us what to expect and not to worry about fluffing our questions as the recording wasn't going out live, and Harriet Gilbertt, the interviewer, also put people at ease. And then we were off - Harriet's voice changed immediately into a BBC announcer's voice, and Henning Mankell began unexpectedly with a short speech about voice amplification, questioning the need for microphones in a church where people have spoken and been heard for hundreds of years unaided. The amplification was, in this instance, necessary as there was a soundman, Tim, in the vestry, recording everything for a broadcast on the BBC World Service on July 2nd at 11 am. So if you were not able to be there on saturday or would like to hear it all again and find out the differences between a live and an edited discussion, you can listen to the radio on July 2nd.
The top picture shows Harriet Gilbertt introducing Henning Mankell; the one below shows the aftermath of the talk, me on the left and Henning Mankell in the middle, signing books.

Henning Mankell in Woodstock - SOLD OUT

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Thu, 05 May 2011 11:43:00 +0000

On Saturday May 28 at 1.30 we are holding a very unusual event: Henning Mankell, author of the Wallander series of detective novels, will be discussing Faceless Killers for the BBC World Book Club, introduced by Harriet Gilbertt. He will also be signing copies of his books afterwards, including the final Wallender mystery The Troubled Man. This is a very rare chance to meet Henning Mankell as he spends most of his time in Maputo and Sweden. The discussion will take place at St Mary Magdalene Church in Woodstock. Tickets are £4 and must be booked in advance from The Woodstock Bookshop: 01993 812760. We will not admit people unless they have booked a place in advance.

Henning Mankell will be interviewed by Harriet Gilbertt who runs the BBC World Service Book Club. As this is a book group discussion, one book will be discussed - Faceless Killers. When we first sent out publicity for this event the book to be discussed was announced as Before the Frost - please note that it has been changed to Faceless Killers.

International Day of the Book

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 08:18:00 +0000

I have just discovered that April 23 is the International Day of the Book. This is even more worrying than the daily emails that arrive declaring the end of the printed book, the percentage of new novels being bought solely as ebooks, the number of people using Kindles, the number of books bought on Amazon, the heroic small booksellers sending out distress signals to their customers asking everyone to please buy a book otherwise they might be forced to close. This is worrying because International Days are usually for things under threat of extinction, like Peace or Whales. I am not sure whether to hang out the balloons and the bunting on April 23 or celebrate the day more quietly by bookselling as usual in the spirit of the wartime poster, Keep Calm and Carry On.

Orange Prize Shortlist

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:19:00 +0000

The shortlist is announced today - we tried to predict what it would be and got it half right... Room, Emma Donoghue; The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obreht; Great House, Nicole Krauss; Grace Williams Says it Loud, Emma Henderson; The Memory of Love, Aminatta Forna ; Annabel, Kathleen Winter. Quite strange that A Visit From the Goon Squad wasn't on the list, as it recently won the National Book Award in America. Of the ones I have read, I think Room should win. It is very well written and quite brilliant. But I must read the others too.

Easter and Bank Holiday opening

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:44:00 +0000

We will be open as follows over the Easter weekend: Friday 22 April 1-4.30; Sunday 24 April SHUT; Monday 25 April 1-4.30. We will be shut on Friday 29 April, open as normal Saturday and Sunday and open from 1-4.30 on Monday 2nd May. On Saturday 30 April the shop will be three years old. We are planning a celebration...

Poetry at The Woodstock Arms

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:40:00 +0000

We had a very good evening as you might be able to tell from the photos taken by Kathryn from Tower Poetry on her mobile. The top one shows, left to right, me, Peter McDonald, David Morley and Stephen Franks (a customer and member of the audience) and the bottom one shows David Morley reading. Peter and David had spent the day judging entries for the Tower Poetry prize, a prize for 16-18 year olds. It was great that they were able to come on and read to us - do look out for their poems if you haven't come across them before - Enchantment, by David Morley and Torchlight by Peter McDonald.

Best New Illustrators

noreply@blogger.com (Rachel) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:51:00 +0000

Ten young illustrators have been named as the Booktrust Best New Illustrators 2011, among them the fabulous Katie Cleminson who came and gave a workshop for us at the museum last year. Also on the list is Sara Ogilvie whose illustrations are perfect for Dogs Don't do Ballet, the very funny book by Anna Kemp who is coming to read it at Woodstock Library on Saturday 11th June at 10 o'clock. Entry is free but tickets must be booked in advance either through the bookshop or at the library. All children need to be accompanied - the age range is approximately 3-7.