Get your event tickets
Backstory is all about going beyond the book, getting the story behind the story. We’d love to give you a warm Backstory welcome at one of our in-person events soon (I promise you: our wine is worth the northern line).
Jill Nalder - Love From the Pink Palace
Wednesday 7th June, 7.30pm, Backstory
Local resident and AIDS awareness campaigner, Jill Nalder, joins us to talk about her life during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, which partly inspired Russell T Davies’s TV drama It’s A Sin.
Eleanor Steafel - The Art of Friday Night Dinner
Wednesday 14th June, 7.30pm, Backstory
A social cook through and through, Telegraph writer Eleanor Steafel has perfected the art of celebrating the best night of the week. Join us for a fun evening of recipes and cocktails at Backstory.
Michael Reid - Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country
Wednesday 21st June, 7.30pm, Backstory
There are few better guides to Spain than Michael Reid, a former columnist and senior editor who covered the country for decades for The Economist. As we contemplate heading back to Spain for summer holidays, he will talk us through its recent history from the death of Franco to the Catalan referendum.
Alice Vincent - Why Women Grow
Wednesday 28th June, 7.30pm, Backstory
Women have always turned to the earth, as gardeners, growers and custodians. Alice Vincent, a journalist, author, Substacker and publishing staffer, is on a quest to understand why.
Join the club(s)
Join our engaged reading community, wherever you are in the world.
Fiction book club (£15 a month or £22.50 for one-off; includes the book)
A book club with a twist - the author joins in, too. Members get the book four weeks in advance, then come together on Zoom. Like any other book club, we discuss what you made of the book with other members. Unlike other book clubs, the author then joins us for the final 40 mins: an interview by Backstory then your chance to ask them your questions directly.
Caleb Azumah Nelson, Open Water 18th July, 8pm, Zoom
Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch 15th August, 8pm, Zoom
Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea 12th September, 8pm, Zoom
Non-fiction book club (£15 a month or £22.50 for one-off; includes the book)
Same set-up as the fiction one above. Chaired by me, since non-fiction is my first love! We’ve had some amazingly high-calibre authors so far like Patrick Radden Keefe and Sathnam Sanghera. These sessions are so intimate; they feel like invitations to the author’s study. Do join us and give it a go.
Michael Pedersen, Boy Friends: A Memoir of Joy, Grief and Male Friendship 30th May, 8pm, Zoom
Katherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne 27th June, 8pm, Zoom
Edward Chisholm, A Waiter in Paris: Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City 25th July, 8pm, Zoom
Tim Marshall, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World 31st August, 8pm, Zoom
This week’s bestseller
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov has been flying out the door since it won the International Booker Prize last week. It is the first time a Bulgarian writer has picked up the gong, for a novel the judges described as “a brilliant novel full of irony and melancholy”.
The novel centres on a “clinic for the past”, a new treatment for Alzheimer’s where every floor reproduces a different era from recent history. Leïla Slimani, chair of the judges, said “it is a great novel about Europe, a continent in need of a future, where the past is reinvented and nostalgia is a poison”.
Personally, I can’t wait to read it.
Team pick of the week
Tom recommends: Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London by Caroline Knowles (new in paperback)
I love this intriguing field guide to the characters who populate rich London. From Shoreditch to Mayfair, sociologist Caroline Knowles peeks behind the curtain to explore how they made it and how they spend it. Social commentary with a tasty side order of anecdote - Tom
I MIGHT NEVER HAVE expected to become a bookseller, but I’m certainly an accidental barman. Before opening Backstory last October, I had zero experience of working in a bar, still less running one. I’d never even pulled pints as a summer job; from the age of 13, I worked Saturdays and summers in my mum’s gift and womenswear shops, making me probably the teenage boy in Newcastle best versed in Fenn Wright Manson’s spring/summer collection.
Still, I have all the zeal of a convert. The bar is one of my favourite things about Backstory, and not only because wine rivals books on my list of the finest things in life (I can think of other contenders, of course, but they do not fit so neatly on a mantelpiece).
Serving coffee and wine at the heart of a bookshop (rather than in a hived-off “café”) is still a relative novelty in Britain. I first came across the idea during a stint working for a newspaper in Washington, D.C. in 2015. There, Kramers is an institution, its Dupont Circle home featuring not only a bar but also a spot for pancakes and lunch.
But it was a newer D.C. bookshop - Solid State Books - that provided more direct inspiration when I visited on a scouting trip this time last year. I loved how they had combined the till “counter” and the bar, so that the roles of bookseller and barman were merged and regulars hung out at the till, chatting about books. I wanted to do something similar at Backstory.
So though it is true that booze has a much better margin than books, the bar was never really about making more money. Backstory would probably take more cash if I stripped out the bar area and replaced it with another five bookcases. Instead, the bar is about making Backstory a place as much as a shop; a space to hang out in, not just to pop into. Bookshops can be intimidating places (even for bookshop owners!): the chatter of friends catching up over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee goes a long way to creating a more welcoming environment.
There are drawbacks, of course. I had to study for the appropriate qualifications and jump through various hoops for a licence. Before Christmas, I had to impose a strict “five o’clock rule” on myself to allow me to unwind with a glass of wine after a madly busy day in the shop as the evening began, but not a moment before. And my latté art still needs work.
But it’s more than worth it. I love seeing the shop alive on weekends or buzzy evenings (we open until 9pm every Thursday and Friday), with people perched up at the bar catching up. On one recent evening, two separate book clubs came in to catch up, their laughter ricocheting about the place. Whether either of the groups discussed the books in question, I cannot be sure, but there was such a lovely atmosphere.
Now summer is finally here, we are expanding our bar menu. We’ve already added peach beer, rosé and cava. This week we’ll start serving Hayman’s peach and rose gin, proudly distilled in Balham.
But I wanted to ask your help. We’re looking to add a great non-alcoholic beer and also some non-fizzy soft drink options for kids and adults. We would love any suggestions in either of these categories - please just comment below or hit reply to send me a message.
And we’re also keen to offer something more to chew on than the latest Patrick Radden Keefe. I always love it when you get some small, free nibbles with your booze in Spain and Italy, so we’re thinking of doing that in the evenings. And we might sell a handful of sweet treats to go with your coffee during the day. But what should we choose?
As always, I’d love to hear any and all thoughts.
In the meantime, please do pull up a stool at the bar one evening soon. I’d love to pour you a glass of fizz and help you choose some summer reads.
So, erm… cheers!
Tom
I love Karma Drinks, especially their lemonade!
Clear Head is a nice AF beer. Lots of places in Bristol have that on tap now!