A Place On The Shelf 1: Mythago Wood

A mysterious letter. A secret journal. An ancient wood, in borderland territory. Deceptive paths and strange, ghostlike figures, stirring at the edge of the trees…

A Veritable Bewilderment of Delights

I’ve always quite liked the style of old handbills: the erratic punctuation, jumbled type sizes and overuse of exclamation marks especially. If I produced a handbill for this blog, it would look something like this…

Saving Pages: A selection of vintage bookmarks

As a child of second-hand booksellers I had ready access to books and their offshoot – bookmarks. I recently rediscovered a box filled with some that once upon a time I had hoarded.

Balham enters the Anthropocene

At the inaugural Balham Literary Festival, a gathering of Nature Writers, Landscape Writers and Writer writers came together to discuss the state of the natural world. Here’s my report on what I saw and heard.

A time for shelf analysis: New Year reading resolutions

It’s dark. It’s raining. January is upon us and the season of reflection, projection and resolve is underway. For voracious readers, this means that the perennial question: what to read next will be nagging at their shoulders more urgently than ever.

Common Ground or Private Park: Whose Nature (writing) is it anyway?

This post originally began as a rant about ‘gatekeeping’ in so-called ‘New Nature Writing’. Since then, I’ve tightened it up a little, and updated some of the links, esp. re lack of diversity in nature writing, creeping nativism and more.

In The Shadow of the Library: Terror and Wonder – The Gothic Imagination

Crumbling ruins, moonlight, tree-lined walks, bats flitting, owls hooting, wolves howling, trapdoors and darkling cellar stairs…

Ever since I can remember I’ve been attracted to things that might be termed ‘Gothic’. For that reason I have been looking forward enormously to the latest exhibition at the British Library: Terror and Wonder – The Gothic Imagination.

Ten Books

I was recently nominated by a friend on Facebook to post a list of the 10 books that had made the most impact on me. It was a lot harder than I thought and I’ve had to miss out some real favourites. I could have written ten lists, let alone ten titles, featuring almost entirely…

Lyrical by the sea: Clevedon’s Poet’s Walk

Clevedon: the most boring seaside town in all England; filled with dusty, fusty little sepia-tinted shops, selling dull stuff like lacework, horse brasses and pink and blue vintage porcelain salt-and-pepper sets in the shape of Edwardian ladies.

At least that’s what I used to think…

David Abbott, writer, book lover, inspiration

David Abbott, one of advertising’s best known, most accomplished and best beloved writers died last Saturday 17 May. One of the founders of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, he was responsible for a huge number of famous ads and campaigns for clients including BT, Sainsbury’s, The Economist and Volvo. My two editions of D&AD’s Copy Book are…

A dream of a bookshop: Topping & Company Booksellers, Ely

The Topping and Company bookshop in Ely is so good it’s almost laughable. This is the kind of shop that you don’t expect to find in real life; only, perhaps, in a lost Penelope Lively children’s book, or there to be sneered at for its too-good-to-be-true perfection in a Richard Curtis film.

Walking into history: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts

As a reader some books are inevitable. This one had nagged at me for years, before finally, I plunged in and it felt like meeting an old friend.

Behind Bristol’s Closed Doors

A new way to go behind the scenes of some of Bristol’s most historic buildings.

What we read about when we read about ghosts

A ‘spotter’s guide’ to some of the more common themes, obsessions and clichés to be found in non-fiction ghost books.

Coping with the ‘to read’ pile: confessions of an English book-eater

All book lovers and avid readers, whatever type of book or subject matter they’re into, are faced with one great big non-negotiable truth – YOU’LL NEVER READ THEM ALL.

Still raucously Ridley: Dalston’s Street Market

In the last half century, visions of Dalston have been refracted in many different ways, from cult 1950s novels, 90s Yardie tales, angst-ridden millennial films to the clean windows of hip coffee shops. But for me, as an ex-resident, its pulsing, vital heart remains the stalls and sounds and crush of Ridley Road Market.

Down winding roads & through tree tunnels into the land of Wow

I’ve just returned from a three-day visit to the Port Eliot Festival, in St Germans, Cornwall. It’s hard to put into words just how good and right the place and atmosphere felt. On the last stage of the drive you wind through a series of roads that alternately give views across small fields that are…

Where’s the perfect place to read a book?

The beauty of books is that you can read them anywhere, at any time.

But is there an ideal place to do it? Indoors, outdoors, under a tree, in a favourite chair, on a train, or on the loo?

Into the Narroways – a landscape of words

Landscapes, imagined and remembered, have always played a central role in literature.

The fascinating relationship between writers and the British landscape is currently explored in a new exhibition at The British Library: Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands. Here are some thoughts it inspired.