Backstory

Friday 13th October, 7pm

Come in around 6:30 to sign up if you want to perform. Sign up will be at the door, on the night. Each open mic-er will have 5 min to read poetry, prose, etc. (though there's no need to fill up the whole time).

Headlined by Ellie de Satgé. Ellie is a London based poet and her debut pamphlet Rein it in will be coming out with Broken Sleep Books in May 2024.

We're hosting live music every Thursday in our bookshop, from 6-8pm. Each week there's a different act, from folk singer-songwriters to jazz/funk saxophonists.

Come for an evening of drinks, brook browsing and a magical vibe.

No need to book, just turn up. See you there.

THE THING WITH opening hours is people always know where you are. Journalists can be “on the road” when it suits them, or lurk behind out-of-office emails; politicians have caseworkers; even dentists have receptionists and waiting lists. But you only have to stick Backstory into Google Maps to have a pretty good idea of where I’ll be and, most of the time at least, when. Which means, even if I’m ensconced in my office downstairs trudging through a spreadsheet or paying another invoice, it’s usually not long before one of the team shouts down, “Tom, there’s someone for you.”

We run two book clubs that meet monthly on Zoom, for fiction and non-fiction. The best thing about them is that the author herself attends each session.

We've been so lucky to be able to ask our questions directly to authors like Caleb Azumah Nelson, Patrick Radden Keefe, Katherine Rundell, Tim Marshall and Sathnam Sanghera.

Next at the fiction book club: Rebecca Wait, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way

Next at the non-fiction book club: Philippe Sands, The Last Colony