Valentine’s Day is upon us. For some, it can be tricky to find the best way to spend the romantic holiday.
Whether you’re riding solo or coupled up, here’s what some of our clients are getting up to that might give you the inspiration you need!
Henley Festival announces its unmissable line-up to celebrate its 40th anniversary
Henley Festival, the UK’s most glamourous music and arts festival, announces a stellar line-up for its 40th anniversary celebrations from Wednesday 6th – Sunday 10th July 2022.
Notable headliners include one of the most successful artists in UK chart history, Craig David, The Script, Boney.M and the legendary, incomparable Sir Tom Jones.
Henley Festival is a truly unique event, embracing a vibrant programme from pop to world music, classical to jazz, where art and gastronomy share equal billing with music.
While not taking place on Valentine’s Day, be sure to get your tickets before they all get snapped up!
Follow @henleyfestival for more.
Genre-bending poetry video-book, Hologram by Miguel Cullen
For all you poetry lovers out there, Hologram is a genre-bending poetry video-book by British-Argentine poet Miguel Cullen.
Hologram is a genre-bending ‘video-book’, with a charging socket and an embedded light-weight video module in the inside cover, which plays four video-poems out of a creatively decorated screen.
Cullen’s poems in Hologram feature celebrities, mythological characters and historical figures – from Frida Kahlo to Donald Trump, Timothée Chalamet to Maradona, Pope Francis to Medusa. Much of the first part of the book (“Guest List”) deals with charged themes such as sexuality, race, class and celebrity, but leavened with playfulness and a subtle quest for imagery. Much of Cullen’s work takes liberties with Latin-rooted languages as an extension of English, as well as developing imagery
Hologram comes out Tuesday 15 February 2022 and available to pre-order here.
Bookshop.org giveaway!
To celebrate International Book Giving Day – also on the 14th – Bookshop.org are partnering with BookToker’s Whatbritreads, fallon.reads, anya.reads, and the_caffienatedreader, for a giveaway, where winners will get two gift cards – one to keep and one to be gifted to someone who is important to them.
Don’t miss out on the chance to get a free gift card for yourself and a loved one.
Bookshop.org is an online bookshop with a mission to financially support local, independent bookshops.
Follow @bookshop_org for more.
Helena Bonham Carter gives an exclusive reading of Allie Esri’s A Poem For Every Day of the Year
Snuggle up and listen to one of the poems from Allie Esri’s A Poem For Every Day of the Year just in time for Valentine’s Day.
The magnificent collection of 366 poems compiled by Allie Esiri, includes one to share on every day of the year. Reflecting the changing seasons and linking to events on key dates throughout the year.
Listen to the reading here
Dalvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra by Laura Galloway
For those looking for a heart-felt book to delve into, Dálvi is the story of Laura Galloway’s time in a reindeer-herding village in the Arctic, forging a solitary existence as she struggled to learn the language and make her way in a remote community for which there were no guidebooks or manuals for how to fit in. Her time in the North opened her to a new world. And it brought something else as well: reconciliation and peace with the traumatic events that had previously defined her – the sudden death of her mother when she was three, a difficult childhood and her lifelong search for connection and a sense of home.
Both a heart-rending memoir and a love letter to the singular landscape of the region, Dálvi explores with great warmth and humility what it means to truly belong.
Hear about Laura’s journey in her own words in this brilliant interview by the i Newspaper.
The paperback edition of Dalvi is available to purchase here.
Maggie O’Farrell announces her new book The Marriage Portrait
After the award-winning success of her book Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell has announced the publication date for her latest book The Marriage Portrait. Fans of her work can now pre-order the book before its release on 1 September 2022.
O’Farrell paints as evocative a picture of Renaissance Italy as she did Shakespearean England in the former Waterstones Book of the Year Hamnet, as Cosimo de’ Medici’s third daughter learns to navigate an opaque Florentine court and an enigmatic new husband.
Litalist and Milly Johnson’s Valentines-inspired bookshelf
For all you bookworms and lovebirds alike, bestselling romance novelist Milly Johnson has curated a Litalist shelves for Valentines Day.
Perfect for gift ideas or simply recommendations for a cosy night in, there are recommendations for any taste including rom-coms, classic love stories and romances written by men.
Litalist offers an ethical UK-based alternative to Amazon, with bookshops being able to sell through the site and have customers click and collect in store. Litalist also creates intelligent, bespoke recommendations for readers through a combination of peer-to-peer suggestions and a crowd sourced EQ, the book’s unique emotional signature, based on how users have categorised the book in terms of how it made them feel.
Follow @LitalistBooks and @MillyJohnson for more.
Awesomebooks offers a sustainable alternative for eco-conscious bookworms
AwesomeBooks is one of the UK’s biggest online and second-hand book retailers. Their pioneering circular business model is centred around reuse to ensure that no book is thrown away or wasted – used books are collected and either re-sold, donated or recycled and turned into something new. Since its launch in 2004, the retailer has saved 132 million books globally from landfill! By selling used books alongside new editions, they make reading more accessible and the circular model reduces the environmental impact of book production.
If you’re looking for a gift for someone that is more conscious of their impact on the environment, then Awesomebooks is the place for you. Head to their website and look through some of their romance novels which will make a great gift this Valentine’s Day.
Follow @awesomebooksuk for more information.
Giveaway of young-adult novel The Younglings: Shadows and Magic by Helena Craggs
If you’re looking for a YA fantasy romance to sink your teeth into, don’t miss out on this great giveaway from Helena Craggs where she’s offering the chance to win a free copy of The Younglings: Shadows and Magic.
The Younglings follows Quinn Carter, who after finding out his father is a demon king, becomes embroiled in a supernatural world – and when paranormal problems spill over into the mortal realm, he and his supernatural team must devise a way to stop it.
To find out how to enter the giveaway follow Helena Craggs on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Learn about the history of love with The Wolfson History Prize
Interested in hearing about the history of love? Then look no further than Thomas Wyatt:
The Heart’s Forest by Susan Brigden and Transformations of Love: The Friendship of John Evelyn and Margaret Godolphin by Frances Harris, both recipients of The Wolfson History Prize, most prestigious history writing prize in the UK, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest by Susan Brigden (2013 winner)
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) was the first modern voice in English poetry. His poetry holds a mirror to the secret, capricious world of Henry VIII’s court, and alludes darkly to events which it might be death to describe.
This new biography is attuned to Wyatt’s voice, the paradox within him of inwardness and the will to ‘make plain’ his heart, which make him exceptionally difficult to know – and fascinating to explore.
The most controversial episode in the life of the seventeenth-century virtuoso and diarist John Evelyn has always been his passionate, complex friendship with the Restoration maid of honour Margaret Blagge, afterwards Mrs Godolphin.
This new study is based on Evelyn’s papers, now fully accessible for the first time, and on important and hitherto unknown correspondence between Margaret Blagge and her future husband. Its diverse and vividly realized settings include the glamorous, disreputable public household of the Restoration court and the great gardens of the day, at once ‘little worlds’ in microcosm and recreations of paradise on earth.
To learn more about the Wolfson History Prize please visit www.wolfsonhistoryprize.org.uk or connect on Twitter via @WolfsonHistory /#WolfsonHistoryPrize.
