Secret Trail in the Bookshop

The Long Take by Robin Robertson

"Could I write an autobiographical novel, I wonder? Can one make a book out of the very essence of one's self? Perhaps so, if one was left with one's gift stripped bare of all that made it worth having, and nothing else was left..." - Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

Symposium in the Bookshop

The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet" - Plato, The Symposium

 "I do not remember a time when I could not read, nor any time when reading was not a joy and a solace." - Emmeline Pankhurst

 "Every work that isn't a masterpiece is, in a sense, a part of a vast camouflage. You've been a soldier, I imagine, and you know what I mean. Every book that isn't a masterpiece is cannon fodder, a slogging foot soldier, a piece to be sacrificed, since in multiple ways it mimics the design of the masterpiece." - Roberto Bolaño