A breath of fresh air in the form of Emily’s Walking Book Club. Join us as we wander the green spaces of London’s Hampstead Heath, coming up with book recommendations along the way.

Lockdown kept us indoors, but in some ways it opened our horizons. With a little help from technology we crossed the Atlantic to catch up with Claire Handscombe, presenter and producer of BritLit, a fortnightly podcast that tracks what’s going on in the British publishing world. From Claire’s novel Unscripted to her favourite recent reads, […]

The London Metropolitan Archives collects, preserves, celebrates and shares the stories of London and Londoners. They also have a book group, open to all, that meets monthly to explore a range of London writing, fiction or non-fiction, for all periods in London history. Not only do participants get to discuss the book, they also get […]

The early days of motherhood might not seem an obvious moment to expand your reading horizons, but for Elizabeth Morris the combination of night-time wake-ups and heightened emotional sensitivity led her to a new appreciation of the printed word. After the birth of her son she decided to build on her career in the book […]

We discover a book club for people who don’t like the idea of all having to read the same book. At Bee’s Bookshare everyone brings a book they’ve loved, loathed, can’t put down or can’t get into and shares them – best of all everyone gets to take away a new read at the end. We […]

If you’d like to start a book club but are wondering who to invite, how about staying close to home? Annie and Dave tell us about their successful family book club, which has kept their family engaging with books and debating their merits for seven years now. They share their tips for making it work […]

Our latest interview is with Tyona Campbell, owner of Barnabees, a very special secondhand bookshop tucked away in the small Suffolk village of Westleton. Tyona tells us how her shop is in a small way a protest against the data-gathering online giants, why in her shop the books they find you, and why books benefit […]

Tucked away in London’s Soho is a hidden gem of a bookshop. The Second Shelf sells rare and antiquarian books, modern first editions, ephemera, manuscripts, and rediscovered works – all by women. Proprietor A. N. Devers told us how she went from rare-book dealing to shopkeeping. We also hear about the bookshelves that regularly make […]

Ever dreamed of owning a bookstore? How about one a stone’s throw from the beach? When Francesca Wilkins realised the British seaside town of Margate didn’t have a bookshop selling new titles, she realised it was the perfect place to realise her lifelong ambition and launch her own. Listen in for the behind-the-scenes story and the […]

For a ton of great recommendations – most of which were new to us – we turned to Anna Baillie-Karas from Australian podcast Books on the Go. Listen in to hear about some books that might be new to you, or ones that you might have overlooked when they came out. And finally a book […]

Too often in the reading world we chase the latest new release. So, it was a great pleasure to interview Simon Thomas who specialises in seeking out books from the past. We discuss his unusual take on a book club where he and like-minded book bloggers read and review books from a particular year in […]

From Game of Thrones to Watership Down, via Haruki Marukami, Margaret Atwood, Frank Herbert and everything in-between, Mostly Harmless are a thriving book club devoted to sci-fi, fantasy, horror and comics. We interviewed founders Derek and Barbara about the hits and misses over the years. They shared a great set of expert recommendations for die-hard […]

A special interview with Simon Schama, historian, academic, documentary maker, journalist, cultural polymath and keen fiction reader. Listen in to find out what sends him to sleep happy, how his reading informs his writing, his favourite bookstores, his views on the pleasure of imperfect books, and best of all a ton of book suggestions. Plus […]

What’s it like to be in a book club that only reads frightening books? And what is fear anyway? It turns out it means different things to different people. Join us for a fascinating interview with Andy Russell, who runs London’s Horror Book Club, and find out why there may be much more to the […]

Whether for book club or your TBR shelf, 2019 may be the year for a challenge. But what is it about classics such as Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, or Homer’s Iliad, James Joyce’s Ulysses or Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain that makes them seem more daunting than pleasurable? Fear not, we have just the […]

From hockey team to all-male book club with 50+ members, Jim West tells us how founding The Paperbacks revealed ‘the great undiscovered demographic’: men who read. Book recommendations Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver by Stephen R. Bown The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie by […]

What do you do when your small start-up book club is so popular that you quickly become overwhelmed with new members? For Eléonore Pratoussy of the Lesbian Book Club in East London, it signalled a need for more lesbian book groups. Happily she has a plan to expand. Eléonore and fellow bookclubbers Caroline and Carina […]