Martin Latham – The Bookseller's Tale
7–8pm
Wednesday 9 October
£5
Waterstones, Fremlin Walk, Maidstone, UK
Description
Waterstones longest serving employee, employed by Tim Waterstone, will talk about The Bookseller’s Tale – now published in 6 languages and praised by Alan Bennett and David Mitchell – and about the tactility of books, about marginalia, page-folders, spine-crackers, incunabula, reading nooks, book pedlars and comfort books.
"The right book has a neverendingness, and so does the right bookshop.
This is the story of our love affair with books, whether we arrange them on our shelves, inhale their smell, scrawl in their margins or just curl up with them in bed. Taking us on a journey through comfort reads, street book stalls, mythical libraries, itinerant pedlars, radical pamphleteers, extraordinary bookshop customers and fanatical collectors, Canterbury bookseller Martin Latham uncovers the curious history of our book obsession - and his own.
Part cultural history, part literary love letter and part reluctant memoir, this is the tale of one bookseller and many, many books."
Copies of The Bookseller's Tale will be available for purchase and signing by the author.
Biography
Martin Latham has been a bookseller since 1984, in the independent sector and, since 1990, running the Canterbury branch of Waterstones. He is the longest-serving Waterstones employee at the legendary Canterbury bookshop, he has run over 2000 author events, and once ordered the excavation of the Roman bath-house floor under the shop: the biggest petty cash slip in Waterstones history.
Umberto Eco wanted to work in the shop for a day. He did.
He is a frequent columnist in The Bookseller, the author of Kent’s Strangest Tales, and a contributor to the Oxford Guide to Twentieth Century Literature. His second book, Londonopolis, was published in 2014. His ode to books, The Bookseller's Tale, was published in 2020 and was named a Book of the Year by The Spectator and the Evening Standard. Martin has a PhD in Indian History from King’s College London and is married with five children and three stepchildren.