‘It feels great to be in a space that is exactly what I wanted it to be’

In recent years, the top end of Gloucester Road has become a destination in its own right.

With Fed 303, Cave and the new Pinkmans pop-up, there are now plenty of spots to get a coffee or a glass of wine on a weekend. And now, a bookshop has joined their midst.

“Can my daughter please get a Saturday job here?”, one customer begs as I enter Gloucester Road Books on a busy Saturday.

That’s another thing: if you want a chance to properly browse, you’re best off coming on a weekday. On Fridays and Saturdays, the queues are down the street.

The shop itself is well curated, with plenty of thoughtful touches – right down to the newly painted shutters by local artist Nina Raines.

On the opening day, The Letterpress Collective’s Printing Bike was parked outside and was printing original bookmarks for people in the queue.

You won’t find the latest Jeffrey Archer on the shelves of Gloucester Road Books – photo: Martin Booth

Tom Robinson, the owner – a former bookseller and first-time bookshop proprietor – says he has loved being able to have full creative control.

“I loved getting to make all the decisions, down to the colour of the paint on the walls and the style of lights.

“I also built all the shelves from scratch myself. It feels great to be in a space that is exactly what I wanted it to be.”

The shop stocks a mix of fiction and non-fiction, with a section at the back for children and young people and a few shelves for art, cookery, gardening and local interest.

Tom’s handcrafted shelves are split into themes, complete with neatly printed signs, ranging from ‘Time & Place’ to ‘People & Culture’.

Shelves at Gloucester Road Books divided into themes including nature writing and philosophy & theory – photo: Martin Booth

Tom is clearly thriving off his newfound independence as a shop owner. “I don’t think I could work another day for an employer in my life,” he tells Bristol24/7.

“There’s no bullshit. There are no ridiculous Tory autobiographies or the new Jeffrey Archer. I can put really interesting, odd, fantastic, challenging books on the shelves and people are buying them.”

This certainly makes a change. In a week where the national Sunday Times bestseller list featured Richard Osman’s debut (which has been in the top-10 practically since it was released back in September) and new novels by Jeffrey Archer and Danielle Steel, the patrons of Gloucester Road Books were being much more adventurous.

“Of course, the new Kazuo Ishiguro novel (Klara and the Sun) has done brilliantly, as has Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, but so have a lot of books by small presses, like The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which is on the Booker International shortlist.”

On the shop’s already flourishing Instagram account, Tom recently shared the top ten bestsellers across fiction, non-fiction and children’s from his first week and a half of opening.

He’s right: the lists are surprising. They feature authors from Ghana, Japan, Argentina and Scotland.

https://www.instagram.com/p/COLGII2D_WR/

“I thought it was a risk to stock a lot of books from the smaller, lesser-known publishers, but people have really responded to it,” says Tom. “I feel really relieved and justified in my decision.”

Bishopston readers are certainly relishing the opportunity to browse closer to home. Besides the Amnesty second-hand bookshop further down Gloucester Road and Max Minerva’s up the hill in Westbury Park, this area was previously rather literarily deprived.

Tom picked the top end of Gloucester Road because “it’s a little quieter and because you get the forecourt, so when the doors are open you’re not immediately on the road”.

He’s lucky to have this forecourt area, because the hordes of eager book buyers have somewhere to queue. And the queues aren’t getting any smaller.

Nina Raines’ art adorns the shutters of Gloucester Road Books – photo: Freya Parr

Main photo: Martin Booth

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