Musings

  • This is your shop

    We received the following message from a young customer who was recently won the ‘Top Young Reporter of the Year’ award.  Congratulations Rosie It’s Rosie, I’m not sure if you remember me but wrote an article about the shop last Autumn. I was lucky enough to win Top Young Reporter of the Year and also received […]

  • Local poet, Ricci Read, preaches

    Being a poet is a lifestyle. It is a commitment to being your rebellious, authentic self. I preach that poetry shouldn’t follow any rules! I hope to inspire others to find and use their voice to tell their own stories. Of course, it can be fun to write a haiku or a sonnet. It can […]

  • To read or not to read?

    Blog note:  Author Regina Lopez Puerta’s first language is Spanish, not English. This is why we have retained the American spelling of realised   Incidentally, Regina will be hosting Spanish classes at Red Lion Books. Please email us@redlionbooks.co.uk for more information.   There’s a piece of advice my Dad gave me when I was little […]

  • Yale University Press, Bookshop of the month

    A Little History of Yale University Press London Yale University Press, founded in Connecticut in 1908, first established a marketing base in London in 1961, before going on to publish its own list of titles, alongside the books produced by its US head office, in 1973. Yale now has a unique position as the only […]

  • 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. […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • Say it with books

    There’s something rather lovely leaving the shop when it’s still light. I’ll probably say the same thing when it starts to get dark, come November, when there’s the first signs of the orange street-light glow. But for now, Spring is on its way and love is very much in the air. There’s always a lot of […]

  • First Impressions

    It’s cold. I mean really cold. Three, sometimes, four layers cold.  It was one of the things that was brought to my attention when I had my interview for the post of bookseller way back in June last year. “It gets warm in the summer and pretty cold in the winter.” “I mean how cold […]