coddie

  • Eyes on the Prize

    At this  time of year, we have a gaggle of students popping into the shop, each clutching one of our tokens, which they’ve been awarded as a school prize.  We like to play a little game here at Red Lion Books by trying to guess what subject the student won their prize for, based on the […]

  • Eye of Boudica Event at Red Lion Books

      The Eye is all-seeing, all-consuming, always being watched and judged for good or bad actions. Big Brother is Watching you, as Orwell said. People correct themselves when they’re aware an eye is on them. Crime decreases, and people clean up their acts, behaving themselves as the ever-present Eye observes them closely. It makes sense […]

  • April 2022, We’ve got it covered

    It’s the end of April.  I’m writing that opener almost like it’s a slightly bewildered revelation rather than a statement of fact. A third of the way through my bookshop year and it hardly feels like a week has passed, let alone all the seconds and minutes I’ve spent at the coalface of indie bookselling. […]

  • Meeting Ben Aaronovitch

    A blog post from Louise, our ‘newest and youngest’ member of staff’.   Friday the 8th of April, 2022, was my first time working an event for Red Lion Books, and it was a biggie.  The first book in the Rivers of London series, aptly titled Rivers of London, came out when I was 11, […]

  • The Marmalade Diaries author event

    I’m writing this post with a bit of a fuzzy head – although the marmalade is helping.  There were a lot of inspiring things that came out of Ben Aitken’s talk last night, one of which was reminding me of the restorative effects of a good old-fashioned piece of toast with marmalade on it.  The […]

  • March ramblings

    And so, March leaves us like a lamb, or so the phrase goes. Although in Indie bookshop-land, it’s been a little the other way around with a quiet, genteel period of activity at the start of the month and then a flurry towards the end. Some of that was down to Mothers’ Day, a difficult time […]

  • Keir Starmer visit

    I Photo credit: Colchester Gazette Blog post by Louise Prior (newest and youngest Red Lion Books Team member).   He arrived around fifteen minutes past eleven. I wasn’t on the top floor when Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, came into Red Lion Books but downstairs organising the TikTok Book Recommendation display. Since our […]

  • Francis Spufford and his Light Perpetual

    Daytime book club is back and we were thrilled to have Francis Spufford as our guest, discussing Light Perpetual. Book club member, Paul Burns, shares his thoughts. We were gathered in the bar area of the Three Wise Monkeys, looking at each other and chatting and wondering what he’d look like! And then there he […]

  • Essex Year of Reading & Toto the Cat

    Essex County Council launched their Year of Reading and asked Red Lion Books to supply books to St Thomas More’s Primary School, ahead of Dermot O’Leary (former X Factor host) visiting the school. “Yes“, we said. Set up by the Essex Education Taskforce, the Year of Reading is a £1million project aimed at encouraging children […]

  • What brings you here?

    Is it Lemn Sissay saying ‘Hourglass will stay with me for a long time?’ Did he tempt you? Or perhaps it’s Hollie McNish? ‘A book for anyone who ever has been or ever will be heartbroken. So that’s everyone‘. Maybe it is Max Porter saying, ‘This book glows in the heart of the reader‘. Or is […]