“You’re invited!
At the London Review Bookshop, we have some upcoming events that are too good to keep to ourselves. Tickets are limited, so book early to avoid disappointment :
April Customer Evening
Wednesday 2 April, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Browse our shelves with a glass of wine and an Eccles cake from the London Review Cake Shop, and get 10% off any books, DVDs, cards and stationery purchased on the evening. We are also offering a FREE gift wrapping service on the night.
Tonight’s menu: According to The Bloomsbury Cookbook, Virginia and Leonard Woolf considered Eccles cakes suitable sustenance for type-setting and printing at the Hogarth Press. We think they make suitable sustenance for book browsing too! We’re pairing them with nutty Lancashire cheese and plenty of Russian tea.
Eccles Cake pieces, Lancashire cheese crumbs and slurps of Russian Caravan Tea
As well as the usual treats – wine and nibbles and 10% off books – you’ll have the chance to win a copy of the beautiful Bloomsbury Cookbook, courtesy of Thames & Hudson. Just print a copy of your confirmation email and hand it in to one of our booksellers at the Customer Evening for the chance to win.
Good luck!”
The Bloomsbury Cookbook Window Display
This message arrived in my email Inbox a few weeks ago and I worked out that my next visit to London would coincide with this customer evening. The London Review Bookshop is another of my favourite London shops. On many occasions I have visited the Cake Shop with friends, family and to meet members of the online book group. It’s one of our favourite venues.
Shopping Evening at London Review Bookshop
However, on many visits, time in the Cake Shop takes priority and I find I have little time to browse the bookshelves. So I was looking forward to spending time in the actual bookshop for a change.
The Bloomsbury Cookbook looked very tempting … but I was expecting to win a copy! I haven’t received the ‘winners email’ yet though 😦 . I think I will reserve a copy from the Library as it may be useful to contribute to creating the atmosphere when I visit Sussex and the Bloomsbury connections later next month.
Breakfast at Charleston
I spotted some other books to add to my list for the future :
A History of Armchair Travel : I do a bit of this. What’s not to like?
Quiet New York : I have no plans to visit but I do have companion Quiet volumes – London and Paris
(I could be tempted to buy this just to read, anyway)
I’m a big fan of the late W.G.Sebald – new books keep being published!
I found the staff were very patient and helpful. They found each of the titles I wanted to buy, recommended a further title and hunted high and low for a book which should have been in stock but being a very slim volume had probably been mis-shelved.
The four books I bought last evening
The Cake Shop Window Display – I’m Looking Forward to My Next Visit!
miladysboudoir 
I am so envious of your night out – that’s a lovely shop!
You can see why it is one of my favourites!
Books and food-a wonderful combination. Thanks you for taking me there!
We are like-minded people, RH.
Wow — two of my favorite foods from my student days at Lancaster. Eccles Cakes — they made wonderful ones right in the campus bakery, and Lancashire Cheese from the city market — I can almost taste that crumbly delight. This spot is definitely on the list for our next London visit, whenever that may be.
Of course! So many connections. Soon be time to come over and cross a few places off that list? 😉
As a subscriber to the LRB I really ought to visit and patronise the bookshop. Your post only confirms it.
But why didn’t I get an invite? 😦
I can only think that the two (shop and review publication) keep separate databases. Get along to the shop website and sign up for their newsletter. And then get along to the shop – we usually style it the London Review of Cakes Bookshop – and enjoy browsing and eating next time you are anywhere near the British Museum.
And Lancastrian culinary delights too!
Lancashire seems to occur worryingly often in this blog 😉
We get everywhere 🙂
I am lying here in bed with my cup of coffee on a dreary Tasmanian Day wanting to be in the bookshop you so enthusiastically described. I love the armchair travel book and was happy to see you bought 4 books. Thoroughly enjoyed your post. It has inspired me to get out of bed and read a bit today. Lovely post.
Thank you, TP. One of the lovely things about reading is that it can be done very comfortably in bed at any time of the day or night. I hope you have a good book on the go.
Looking forward to our “breakfast at Charleston”!
Me too – can’t wait!
No wonder you are always trekking over hill and field! Cake calories to burn off! (I gave Mr N Under Another Sky for Christmas – we may bump into you up at Hadrian’s Wall.)
Oh, nilly, please don’t remind me! A Hadrian’s Wall bump would be nice.
Finally made it there on Thursday. Wonderful REAL bookshop. I was overwhelmed and couldn’t decide what to buy
Well done. You can now see why I like it. Spoiled for choice but I always seem to buy!
[…] shelves and then found myself a seat in their rather excellent cafe (as recommended by Barbara of Milady’s Boudoir) where I had a pot of tea and a cake (to bring up my blood sugar level ready for the walk back to […]