Guest writers

  • Renaturing

    Contributor: Author James Canton So, just for a moment, imagine your most idyllic literary festival event… a marque packed full of an intelligent, wise and interested audience, a fellow speaker who fits perfectly, a chair who coordinates the chat with wit and ease. Then throw in a castle as venue, a little over two miles […]

  • Writer In Residence (Jane- no longer tame)

    A blog. Written by customer and friend of Red Lion Books, Jane Herd Jane- no longer tame Writer in Residence- Red Lion Book Shop, Colchester High Street, 5 th to 23rd August 2025 As Jane- no longer tame I am a feminist writer. My nom de plume arose spontaneously at the end of one of […]

  • A year in the life of a customer, book by book

    Some books what I have read in 2024 This year, I saw the phrase “nourishing seepage” in an online book preview – on the first page, in fact. I ordered it (The Girls, by John Bowen) immediately. First published in 1986, you can only get it second hand in the UK, but this “wry, macabre […]

  • Here Comes The Fun

      We were delighted to welcome Ben Aitken to the woods this summer for our Words In The Woods day festival.   Ben is bestselling author of Here Comes The Fun: A Journey into the Serious Business of Having a Laugh (Icon, July 2024). Perhaps you have read The Marmalade Diaries: The True Story of […]

  • Taking Inspiration from Real Life Stories by Liz Trenow

    Taking inspiration from real life stories By Liz Trenow, 2024, Colchester based best-selling author of The Secret Sister, The Last Telegram, The Forgotten Seamstress, The Silk Weaver, Searching for My Daughter and five other novels. When searching for inspiration for my novels the most important thing is that I feel passionate about the subject. I’m […]

  • In the age of beautiful copies, giveaways, and freebies, are our reviews still honest?

    By Regina Lopez Puerta   For the past couple of years, I’ve been swinging between the world of bookselling and the world of book influencing. They often collide, but surprisingly, they also divert.    In a way, a bookseller has to be a book influencer as well. We’re often invited to events, get free copies […]

  • Guest blog from regular customer Chris Coates

      “I asked the doctor to take my fingers off; he refused, so I pulled them off myself and felt absolutely no pain in doing it”. I suppose it’s inevitable that as a middle-aged man I’ve started reading military history, but I’ll say this for Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart’s Happy Odyssey: […]