Martin Latham

'The right book has a neverendingness, and so does the right bookshop.' This is the curious story of our long love affair with books. Whether comfort reads or cult novels, we carry them with us, inhale the smell of their pages, scrawl in their margins, and protect them from book thieves and bathwater. Despite the many enemies of reading - from poverty to prejudice, from the Spanish Inquisition to Orwellian regimes - its power has endured across centuries. This is partly thanks to people like Martin Latham, the longest-serving Waterstones manager ('It's not a career, it's a philosophic path'). In A Bookseller's Tale, Martin uncovers the history of our collective book-obsession, and introduces us to the Canterbury bookshop that has been his working home for three decades, complete at various points with two rocking horses, a hammock for staff naps and an excavated Roman bath-house floor. Along the way, we encounter itinerant book pedlars, smugglers, obsessive collectors, librarians, miners, Rabelaisian monks and the Rolling Stones. Part cultural history, part literary love letter and part reluctant memoir, this is the tale of one bookseller and many, many books.

The Bookseller's Tale

I racconti del libraio

This curious history of London whisks you down the rabbit hole and into the warren of backstreets, landmarks, cemeteries, palaces, markets, museums and secret gardens of the great metropolis. Meet the cockneys, politicians, fairies, philosophers, gangsters and royalty that populate the city, their stories becoming curiouser and curiouser as layers of time and history are peeled back. Find out which tube station once housed the Elgin Marbles and what lies behind a Piccadilly doorway that helped Darwin launch his theory of evolution and caused the Swedes to wage war against Britain. Do you believe in fairies? Do you know which Leadenhall site became a Nag's Head tavern, morphing into the mighty East India Company, before taking flight as the futuristic Lloyds Building? Who named the Natural History Museum's long-tailed dinosaur Mr Whippy? Spanning above and below ground, from the outer suburbs to the inner city, and from the medieval period to the modern day, Londonopolis is a celebration of the weird and the wonderful that makes the mysterious city of London so magical.

A Curious History of London

Londonopolis

Esta é a história da nossa relação amorosa com os livros, quer os organizemos nas nossas prateleiras, inalemos o seu cheiro, rabisquemos nas suas margens ou apenas nos enrosquemos com eles na cama. Em parte história cultural, em parte carta de amor aos livros e em parte memórias relutantes, estas são as crónicas de um livreiro que honra o seu ofício.

Crónicas de Um Livreiro

Kent’s Strangest Tales is a book devoted to the weird and wonderful side of the Garden of England. Home to historically rich towns such as Canterbury, Margate and Ramsgate, Kent is a county with more strangeness than you can shake a strange-shaped stick at. From Chaucer’s legendary tales of debauchery and naughtiness to Mick and Keef’s very first meeting on a rocking ’n’ rolling Dartford train, Kent has it all – coast, ghosts, castles, treasures, pirates, Britain’s oldest highway and, lest we forget, the old lady who tricked the Luftwaffe. All the stories in this book are bizarre, fascinating, hilarious, and, most importantly, true. Perfect for Kent-dwellers and tourists alike, Kent’s Strangest Tales is a treasure trove of the hilarious, the odd and the baffling – an alternative travel guide to some of the county’s best-kept secrets that date back many thousands of years. Read on, if you dare! Word count: 45,000

Extraordinary but true stories from a very curious county

Kent's Strangest Tales

Ob Trost oder Erkenntnis, ob eine Reise in andere Welten oder Analyse unserer Realität – Bücher bieten all das und noch viel mehr. Wir tragen sie überall mit uns herum und behalten die wichtigen Lektüren unseres Lebens für immer in unseren Herzen. Wir atmen den Geruch ihrer Seiten ein, kritzeln etwas hinein und schützen sie vor Bücherdieben und Badewasser. Dieser lebenslangen Liebe widmet sich der Buchhändler Martin Latham in seinem inspirierenden Buch. ›Vom Glück zu lesen‹ ist wie ein Spaziergang durch die Regale Ihres Lieblingsbuchladens. In einem Kaleidoskop der Geschichte unserer kollektiven Buchbesessenheit führt uns Latham durch chinesische Höhlen und entlang der Pariser Bouquinisten, vom mittelalterlichen Azincourt bis zu den Straßen von Brooklyn im 20. Jahrhundert. Wir erfahren, welches Buch Marilyn Monroe verehrte, dass Napoleon bei jeder Schlacht Goethes ›Werther‹ mit sich trug und was Martin Latham in seinen über dreißig Jahren als Buchhändler alles erlebte. Kurz: ›Vom Glück zu lesen‹ entführt uns auf einen anekdotenreichen, amüsanten Streifzug durch die unendliche Welt zwischen zwei Buchdeckeln.

Martin Latham

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