Autumn Highlights: The Marlborough Literary Festival – right on your doorstep – will take place in October. What literary highlights are you looking forward to at this year’s event?

There are so many to mention from the big hitters like Lionel Shriver, Michael Morpurgo and Jessie Burton to some fantastic non-fiction events like Tom Bower, Tom Holland. I suppose the real highlight though (and probably the first to sell-out) will be Simon Russell Beale taking about Shakespeare. We are terrifically lucky!

Independent bookshops can be part of the lifeblood of a community. What are the unique benefits that White Horse Books offers the local area?

I am not sure how unique we are, other than still existing, but we are involved in most of the local arts events in some shape or form – selling tickets for most concerts, as a Jazz Festival venue and a Literary Festival venue, hosting our own Book Group as well as of course holding over 100 art courses a year and now having a gallery and event space which we have just completed to the rear of the shop.

Runners and Rider: This year the shop is sponsoring The Richard Jefferies Society Writers’ Prize for outstanding nature writing. What are some of your favourite books in this subject category?

We are living in a golden age of nature writing (one of the reasons we decided to sponsor the prize) so there are quite a few. Some of them would be: Robert Macfarlane The Wild Places, Stephen Moss Wild Hares & Hummingbirds, Tristan Gooley The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs, Rob Cowe Common Ground and Helen Macdonald H is for Hawk.

For first time visitors to Marlborough, what other attractions would you recommend visiting – after they’ve stopped by the shop!?

The Merchant’s House, four doors down, is a 16th century town house (a bit like ours) which remains in its original state and has free tours throughout the week. Further afield I would hugely recommend the drive to Avebury, past Silbury Hill. Stunning countryside and immensely affecting ancient monuments.

Interview with Pauline & Mog at Warwick Books

What’s your favourite aspect of working with books?

We love sharing our passion for books and authors with our local community. Making recommendations to customers and passing on reviews and suggestions from others is an absolute pleasure. It is so rewarding to sell books to children who have saved their pocket money to buy a particular title or to hear how much a regular customer enjoyed something your recommended. Owning a bookshop gives you an excuse to have your nose stuck in a book at all times!

What are the perks of being located in Warwick’s historic Market Place?

Warwick is a beautiful town and here on the Market Place we are at the centre of the various community activities, from the Saturday market to the Festivals and Victorian evening which we love to take part in. We have a great footfall and welcome lots of tourists and give them tips about the town. And being a double fronted shop on the square means we have the sun streaming in summer and a beautiful view of the lights at Christmas!

You host a series of events – both in the bookshop and across Warwick. What’s coming up this summer?

We have a full an exciting programme this summer and are looking forward to hosting events in the shop following our refit (supported by James Paterson Grants) and with our partners around the town. We have some exciting authors including Vaseem Khan and Paul Richards and we are launching a ‘local author’ event which we hope will be a great success. It will give us the opportunity to showcase four local authors – Kit De Waal, Dan Vyleta, Susan Fletcher and Toby Vintcent – alongside some other Warwickshire businesses.

What would you say is the ‘book of the moment’?

There are a number of titles that have been popular over the past few months but the most unexpected of these has to be How it works: The Dad which is a new phenomenon!

… and the top three books on your summer reading list?

• The Muse by Jessie Burton
• Where are the Boys? by Professor Alan Reed & Andrew Hamilton
• Harry Potter & The Cursed Child, by J.K. Rowling

An Interview with Mike at The Grove Bookshop

What inspired you to make a career in books?

I fell into book-selling eighteen years ago when I needed a job urgently. Since then I often wonder why I didn’t do it much earlier!

Dream customer: if you could choose anyone to walk through the door now, who would it be?

I would have said Alan Bennett, but he is actually a regular customer, so maybe Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died a few years ago. I love his three books recounting his 1930s walk across Europe.

You are located in a beautiful area, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. What are the benefits of being situated where you are?

We are in a busy town with lots of book lovers, and as the biggest place for miles around we attract customers from all the outlying villages. The tourist season is nearly all year long, and we have an annual Literature Festival which enables us to spread the word about our shop far and wide.

If you had to pick one book on Yorkshire to recommend to a customer visiting the Yorkshire Dales for the first time, what would it be?

I think it would have to be Colin Speakman’s The Yorkshire Dales National Park, which celebrates the history of the Dales as a tourist attraction, although J.L. Carr’s A Month in the Country is another great book.

We’re nearing summer (even if it doesn’t always feel like it!), what’s going to be on your summer reading list?

I’m off to Italy in a few months’ time, so I’m aiming to start Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet, and before then I hope to make use of Yale’s two new Pevsner Architectural Guides to explore some of the great houses and churches of our region.

You recently reopened after being shut for several months due to terrible flooding. How does it feel to be up and running again?

It has been an arduous time for us but what has kept our spirits up has been the extraordinary support we have received from all quarters, both customers and book trade alike. Being open again has confirmed that we are in our rightful place and we are very happy indeed.

The Book Case has been firmly embedded in the Hebden Bridge community for over 30 years now and is still going strong! What’s your secret?

Our longevity in the area is due to having a very loyal and supportive customer base and hence we know their literary tastes well. Our staff has over 80 years bookselling experience and we are open to hearing to hear our customers’ recommendations for stock. We pride ourselves on always striving for improvement in customer service, stock holding and the overall shopping experience.

Any new books this season that you find particularly exciting?

We are particularly happy with the new Pevsner Architectural Guides. We are looking forward to the rest of the series coming out!

The picturesque Calder Valley surrounds you. What is it like to live and work in such a beautiful place?

Although the Calder Valley’s place in history is firmly linked to the industrial revolution, as its valley bottoms being dotted with Blake’s “dark satanic mills” it now is a place of breathtaking natural beauty; a mixture of stunningly rugged open moorland, ancient wooded hillsides and lush meadowland. When the weather is kind it is wonderful walking country, a fine way to arrive and leave work!

Now that you have reopened and are back in business, what can we expect from The Book Case over the next few months?

We are looking forward to a new series of book launches and poetry readings; the restocking of the shelves with new and back titles; and of course the general day to day running of the shop, coloured by enquiries and conversations with the customers we have missed since our enforced closure at the end of last year.

The Architectural Association Bookshop is one of the leading specialist architecture bookshops in London and is located on the architecturally rich Bedford Square. Was this a strategic location choice or a happy accident?

I would say it was an intentional happy choice, we are located in Bloomsbury in this beautiful preserved Georgian Bedford Square. We are here because of the Architectural Association which moved here in 1917. Being so central in London is wonderful, in close proximity not only to the AA but also to many other architectural offices, schools and organisations including the Bartlett and RIBA. The AA Bookshop has been an important feature of the Association for many years and draws international visitors to the area. The associations interests are reflected in the collection, and continues to be resource for the art and architecture community of London.

Can you tell us a little about what makes the Arnolfini Bookshop special?

The Bookshop first opened its doors in 1970 and has been an important part of Arnolfini ever since. Over the years it has built up a reputation as being one of the best specialist Arts Bookshops in the country. Being part of a Gallery our main focus is obviously on Art books but we also carry Fiction, Children’s Books, Magazines, Jewellery, cards and lots more in between. Our aim across the whole shop is to showcase the unusual, strange and hard to find titles that you might not see elsewhere. Also, like most cities, there are fewer bookshops than ever in Bristol these days and so the fact we’re still here nearly 50 years later makes us something of an institution!

What are the benefits of being located in a city like Bristol?

Bristol is such a creative city and always has something interesting going on. It has great venues like Arnolfini, Spike Island and Bristol Old Vic that showcase international artists and annual events such as Mayfest and the Festival of Ideas bringing visitors to the city. There are also lots of local artists, writers, designers and illustrators producing amazing work and this makes for a really vibrant and eclectic arts scene, which is obviously great for us. As a bookshop we’re also very lucky to have really supportive customers who love unusual books and want somewhere in the city that they can see them first hand.

You are known for being a specialist arts bookshop. Can you tell us what your top three best-selling art books are?

Last year Arnolfini was privileged to present a new exhibition by Richard Long and the accompanying book Time and Space was our bestselling book of 2015. Intended to be an Artwork itself rather than a traditional catalogue it focuses on recent work whilst celebrating an amazing career spanning 6 decades.

Next would be Miriam Elia’s brilliant We Go to the Gallery, which is an incredibly smart and funny pastiche of old Ladybird books that has since been imitated widely. We can’t do it justice with a description but anyone with a background or interest in contemporary art should check it out.

Another book that always sells out is Drawing Projects which is both an overview of contemporary drawing practice and a practical guide that includes projects to work through. 2015 also saw the sequel Drawing Projects for Children, which is also excellent and another big seller for us.

And what are your personal top three art books – and why?

Such a hard question but at the moment we really like…

Henry Darger (by Klaus Biesenbach) isn’t a new title but we just got it back into stock and have been reminded how good it is. Henry Darger was an outsider artist who spent nearly his whole life writing and illustrating a 15,000 page book that was only discovered shortly before his death. This is probably the largest collection of his work currently in print and is absolutely incredible.

The World of Charles and Ray Eames is the catalogue for the Barbican exhibition and both are absolutely brilliant. The book itself is really well designed and mirrors the playfulness of the Eames’ design work. The only downside is not being able to afford all the things inside.

The Cat Photographer Our favourite photography book of last year celebrates the career of Walter Chandoha and is worth seeing for the cover alone. Full of brilliant and ridiculous images it’s a classier affair than most of the cat and dog books we see, and we see a lot.

Edinburgh must be an amazing place to be during the seasonal period, and you are located in the very heart of the city. What is the atmosphere like in the bookshop this time of year?

This is my favourite time of year in Edinburgh. Despite the fact that we only have a few hours of sunlight a day and sideways ice-rain, the city is so beautiful. The bookshop’s atmosphere is almost always affected by what the gallery is showing. This year we are exhibiting a show curated by Melissa E. Feldman called Another Minimalism: Art After California Light and Space. It explores the legacy of American West Coast Minimalism on Contemporary artists.  A lot of the pieces employ light effects so the bookshop is filled with lots of colour, bright books and gifts.

The bookshop is also very influenced by our customers. We have a lot of people who come here for gifts for the person who has everything. I aim to stock a carefully curated selection of texts and gifts that are sought out from all over the world. This year we are featuring one off sculptures and pots from a studio called Arhoj in Copenhagen as well as a local maker called Peony Gent.  I am especially excited about a bag made of fabric I commissioned from a maker called Ding Ding that is inspired by our current exhibition.

It looks like you have some incredible contemporary art exhibitions coming up in the gallery, such as the Sara Barker show. Can you tell us a little about how the bookshop supports the events and shows featured in the gallery?

We are a charity so every purchase you make in the shop supports the gallery. I work closely with the director and exhibition team so the bookshop is always stocked with relevant titles. The bookshop doubles as the entry point to the gallery so we run all of the events/greet every visitor/direct people to the café/tell people where the castle is. For this show we have a lot of exhibition related events which you can find on our website along with the line-up for our free bookclub for children aged 2–9, Literary Littles.

What are the top 3 books on your wish-list this December?

I always have a long list but my top three I think would be:

Sarah Gordon’s Indecent Exposures which explores Eadweard Muybridge’s “Animal Locomotion” Nudes. I took my undergraduate degree in The History of Art at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. Muybridge is such a huge part of the history of Philadelphia. My Great-grandfather studied with Eakins (who worked closely with Muybridge). This book moves past the empirical side of Muybridge’s work and offers the reader a more social and contextual view of the project. I also love that it is scholarly research in historical photography.

The Another Minimalism catalogue is pretty neat. It looks at Light and Space art which emerged in California in the mid 1960’s, around the same time as the more well-known New York Minimalism, and examines how it continues to be influential today. I like it especially because it recognises the movement’s pretty impressive and hard to document interest in site-specific installation, colour, immateriality and participation, and ultimately lends insight into a lighter and more experiential Californian minimalism, a movement almost outrageous compared to New York’s austere, monochromatic mathematical abstraction.

Melissa, the curator is lovely too. Her approachability reads in her proposed new take on Californian minimalism’s impact on artists of the current generation. She enjoyably navigates the powerful but pretty much unrecognised influence of West Coast artists such as Larry Bell, Robert Irwin and James Turrell on artists working today. Also, I grew up in Los Angeles and volunteered at the Venice (beach) Art Walk every year and used to spend a lot of time in Larry Bell’s studio. So it is so nice and kind of weird to see his work here in Scotland.

Finally, AIno-Maija Metsola’s Colours. I love children’s books. We have a curated selection of design and illustration related children’s titles. I’m absolutely enamoured with Metsola’s Learning Garden series. She’s a Finnish illustrator who is best known for her collaborations with Marimekko. Her children’s books are steeped in a kind of sweet whimsy. Her frowning lions and bewildered seahorses are too funny. The colours are friendly and beautiful too. My toddler really likes the lift-the-flap part, mainly because she likes ripping the flaps off.

Dream customer? If you could choose anyone to walk through the door now, who would it be – author/artist/celebrity/big spender?

We love all of our customers. Because we’re in Edinburgh, we get a lot of neat people visiting the shop during the festival. We had Benedict Cumberbatch in this year. We also had Phil Jupitus in last week, who comes in quite often and has fantastic taste in art books.  I think my dream customer would be David Sedaris. I’ve been a fan from his beginnings on the American radio station NPR on ‘This American Life’. His use of calmly delivered, wildly hysterical anecdotes and the beauty in which he writes about the making of how someone becomes who they are makes him a modern day Mark Twain. But more like the old, grouchy, hilarious Mark Twain.

Your lovely café looks very inviting! Can you tell us more about it?

It’s such a nice space. There are exciting times ahead as our café is changing hands in December and MILK are moving in. MILK already provide lovely eats around a few of Edinburgh’s Contemporary art venues – Collective, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Jupiter Artland, alongside their café near Haymarket Station. I am looking forward to their brunch. Who doesn’t love brunch?

You support an exciting amount of zines and books from smaller imprints. Which ones particularly stand out?

Our two favourite zines at the moment are A-or-ist and the HM Prison Survival guide. We’ve also just started selling A Contemporary Zine which was created by students from the University of Kent’s MA in the Contemporary, which is run in collaboration with the ICA.

In regards of publishers we’re big fans of Copy Press, Test Centre, Banner Repeater and Book Works to name but a few.

The ICA hosts many events, can you name a particular favourite?

We’ve just hosted the incredible Juliet Jacques discussing her new book Trans as part of our Culture Now Friday lunchtime series. Another favourite was back in July when we held Symposium: Bureaucracy which featured the likes of David Graeber, Jeremy Gilbert Mark Fisher and the Booker Prize nominated Tom McCarthy. Over the next few months we’ve got some great events coming up, including: James Meadway, Tony Norfield, Mary Robertson and Nick Srnicek as part of our Radical Thinkers: Crisis Economics panel, Hal Foster discussing Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency, and the launch of Lawrence Alloway: Critic and Curator.

Your bookshop is situated in an ideal location on The Mall. What’s a good place in the surrounding area to put your feet up with a book?

Well, first choice would have to be the ICA Café Bar, in particular the area we refer to as ‘the snug’ which is the perfect place to sit back with a book and a coffee (or cocktail). We’re also spoilt with St James’ Park and Green Park on our doorstep which – weather permitting – can be peaceful escapes from the city.

What kind can we expect from the ICA bookshop in the future?

We’ve recently launched a fiction and poetry section which we’ll be using to showcase not only the ICA’s historic association with poetry, but also a new generation of emerging authors including works in translation.

As well as focusing on classic theory and new releases our stock is also curated around the ICA programme for we which we’re about to publish reading lists for our autumn exhibitions: Prem Sahib: Side On and Smiler: Photographs of London by Mark Cawson, these will include not only publications linking directly to the artists, but also exploring the themes related to the shows.

Can you tell us a little about what makes your bookshop special?

Broadhursts of Southport was established in 1920 and is not only one of the oldest bookshops in the country but also one of the very few selling both new and second-hand books. The business has traded continuously since 1920 on four floors of our listed mid-nineteenth century building in the centre of Southport. The ground floor is occupied by the New Bookshop containing around 16,000 titles on most subjects, and the other three floors comprise an extensive Childrens Department, eight second-hand book rooms containing upwards of 100,000 titles,and two large Rare Book Rooms with a wide and interesting selection of material.Recently an annexe was added to house our considerable stock of Aviation and Military titles. In addition to books, we stock a varied selection of C18th-20th prints and maps and operate a bookbinding and restoration service. A noteworthy feature of the building is the fact that it still retains most of the Victorian interior fittings including the fireplaces. The ground-floor fireplace in the new bookshop is still in use and usually lit between October and May; also, from the day that the shop opened until the present, every purchase is wrapped in brown paper and string a process that invariably intrigues new adult and child customers alike. Over the years the shop has played host to a variety of authors, both aspiring and established, from Rudyard Kipling and Graham Greene through to Michael Palin, Terry Pratchett, and Carys Bray who brought along a large and fantastic selection of homemade cupcakes for the event.

Your bookshop boasts a wide selection of rare books, what is your favourite thing about working with this kind of literature?

The feeling that one gets sometimes when holding a particular book can be difficult to put into a few words. For instance, very many years ago we purchased a substantial country house library some of the boxes of which we only recently got around to opening. In one of the boxes was a large New Testament, still in its original contemporary leather binding,  printed in Mainz by Anthony Koberger, the greatest printer of his time, in 1478, which was only 25-30 years after the first book to be printed in the West from moveable type. Furthermore it was copiously and clearly annotated in the margins firstly in a beautiful, neat contemporary hand and then in a later 16th century hand. “Who was the first owner? How had it got from Mainz to England? Who had annotated it? How many  had handled it through one of the most turbulent periods in British ecclesiastical history?” All these thoughts go through your head, and I think that as a bookseller, it is a rare privilege to handle something like this wonderful survivor, which first came into existence when Edward IV was still on the throne of England.

On a more prosaic level, one of the main advantages of selling both new and second-hand books is the possibility that if a customer comes into the new bookshop asking for a particular title that isn’t on our shelves, we might have a second-hand copy in stock that would do just as well. Result; happiness all round.

Can you recommend a book to read when visiting the (Southport) seaside?

A number of our booksellers have recently read A Song for Issy Bradley, a novel written by local author Carys Bray. Issy Bradley follows the local Bradley family in the aftermath of the death of their youngest daughter, Issy. The book is set in Southport, and many of the town’s most well-known landmarks, from the arching Millennium Bridge to the marshy coastal flats (themselves the sites of much local folklore and history), play an important role in the story, as a broken family slowly rebuilds themselves. Although at first glance this might not seem like a particularly cheerful story – and to be sure, there are tears within the pages – it is an ultimately inspiring one, as the characters pull themselves together and learn to deal with their grief together. Carys has written a wonderful book that I feel we would have loved anyway, and setting the events in Southport, brining in local culture – down to the obsession of one of the main characters for Liverpool FC – really makes the book a perfect choice when visiting the town.

What do you enjoy most about working in the book business?

The look of happiness on people’s faces, prompted by any number of things. It can be as simple as the slow smile of satisfaction on a cold day, when they huddle around the coal fireplace (and increasingly, have to explain to the younger generation what coal actually is…). For new customers, it can come from the gradual realisation as they walk around and take in the surroundings, that this is a “proper” bookshop, of the type that they had begun to think had been lost in the modern world. It can come from our regular customers, coming in to treat themselves to a new book and a chat with the booksellers, part of a regular routine which often goes back years, even decades.

More so, the look you get when you have matched the person up with the right book, whether they have come in for something specific, often a book they remember from the past, or with a vague desire for a “good book” which, by talking to them, we can often provide. The feeling of being able to do so is also a bonus – as is legitimately being able to say, when you spend all your own time and money on books, that it is research for work purposes…

It is finally beginning to feel like Summer! Can you choose two or three of your favourite books this season?

A new National Theatre title called Concrete Reality: Denys Lasdun and the National Theatre by Patrick Dillon is a gorgeous and highly readable account of the building of the NT, and might surprise a lot of readers with how beautiful the concrete architecture of this famously divisive building actually can be.

The NT Bookshop doesn’t just sell plays, we have a carefully curated selection of childrens’ books, bespoke gifts, merchandise, plus current fiction and non-fiction. Yale’s The Literary Churchill by Jonathan Rose is on my bedside table; a good example of a fascinating topic, well written, that’s selling well.

This one’s a bit cheeky because it’s a series of three plays called Platform, produced by Nick Hern Books and Tonic Theatre, designed for women-only casts. Written by Joel Horwood, Silva Semerciyan & Jemma Kennedy they have been hugely popular and represent an important step in the equal representation of women on stage.

Is there a book that you keep going back to re-read over and over again?

Damon Albarn’s wonder.land, a new musical based on Alice in Wonderland, is coming to the National Theatre in October, so it’s the perfect excuse to re-read. Vintage have published a gorgeous illustrated edition, designed by Vivienne Westwood.

You are closely linked with The National Theatre. How does the bookshop support performances?

The Bookshop is part of the National Theatre and all our sales support the work of the theatre.

We reflect the productions on the theatre’s four stages, not only through selling current playtexts and programmes, but also through regularly changing displays with a curated range of books & gifts relating to the themes of the productions. We like to be as creative and unique as possible, so if we can go and raid the Props department all the better!

We have an unrivalled selection of performing arts texts and a massive play wall with everything from the classics to current fringe shows. And to reflect the nature of the building being an open public space from 9.30am to curtain down, we are open until 10.45pm, for some late night/post-show browsing.

You are located in South Bank, in a vibrant cultural hub of London! What are the benefits of being there?

There are so many! There’s always some sort of activity along the riverside, as well as within the National Theatre, from exhibitions to outdoor summer events. We get a wide variety of visitors as well, from actors and regular theatre-goers, to day-trippers and tourists who’ve made a special journey to visit the NT. Being able to finish work and then have a drink or meal by the river at one the theatre’s bars or restaurants does make it a very special place.