Five Leaves Bookshop

04/10/2026

Very pleased that our Five Leaves Publications book by Rory Waterman is on the shortlist for this major award in the folklore world.
Lincolnshire Folktales Literary Lincolnshire

We are very pleased to announce the Shortlist of The Katharine Briggs Award 2026

Tom Clark, Christopher D. Bader and Joseph O. Baker, Paranormal Britain: Belief in the Uncanny in England, Scotland and Wales (Bloomsbury Academic)

Caitlin Blackwell Baines, How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession (Profile Books)

Davide Ermacora and Simon Young (eds.) The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore: The West Eurasian and Mediterranean Tradition (University of Exeter Press)

Matt King, A History of Goblins (Palgrave Macmillan)

Rory Waterman, Devils in the Details: On Location with Folk Tales in England’s Forgotten County (Five Leaves Publications)

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 10 November after this year’s Katharine Briggs Lecture, at The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB, 18:30-20:30

The Katharine Briggs Lecture will be given by Dr Yinka Olusoga (University of Sheffield):

‘Carving, Mining, Weaving and Forging of Identities, Connection and Belonging: A Personal exploration of children’s folklife and why it matters'.

Tickets £10 (£5.00 for Folklore Society members with the Promo Code) from Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-katharine-briggs-memorial-lecture-and-award-2026-tickets-1992420977779?

03/10/2026

Thank you to all who attended yesterday's launch of our new publication D. H. Lawrence: a Personal Record by Jessie Chambers, and thank you to Eastwood Town Council for hosting it. Copies available in the shop if you missed out.
A joint event with Haggs Farm Preservation Society. Kate Foster and Andrew Cooper spoke from the Society while others read from the book.
It was also the celebration of HFPS's fortieth birthday.

02/10/2026

We'll be supporting the Nottingham leg of this tour. Have you got next year's diary yet? Note to self... get next year's diary too.

01/10/2026

Turn the picture sideways and the author of Happy Blue appears, Blossom Hibbert... Didn't she used to... Yes, she did before leaving for, was it Greece or Australia and, soon Mexico. She read here some time back while living here. Well travelled woman. Still writing poetry, perhaps on the experimental side, perhaps New York School. There's some reading this who will remember her well, and have kept in touch. New to you? Check out her poems. fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/product/happy-blue/

30/09/2026

Tara's poems are published by Five Leaves Publications in the collection Fragments

28/09/2026

So long Solomon... Until a couple of weeks ago our regular customers might have noticed a particularly fine pigeon pottering round our alley, looking down from the struts above the shop or poking around in the plants. This was Solomon - Solly to his friends. We found him (or her or they... the name came out the blue) huddled next to the empty night club at the end of the alley, looking as if he would not survive the night. The next day he had pulled round only a little, so we gave him a little food and water, which was ignored at first. We thought if he was there the next day we'd take him to the vet for the inevitable. We guessed he had smashed into one of night club windows.
But he pulled round. He couldn't fly, at first, but started to eat and drink. Unable to fly, he set up home in a pallet holding some plants. Steadily he improved. We discovered he liked seeds not dried meallie worms. Well, wouldn't you?
Three times, seeing us watering the plants, he came over for a nice refreshing shower. One morning, finding him looking embarrassed sitting next to his empty and now filthy water bowl we added a wash basin so he could bathe properly in the summer heat wave. Food, shelter even if in a pallet, a bath... we've all stayed in worse B & Bs. Solomon began to thrive, gradually learning again how to fly and after a while could fly out of the alley.
At this stage we reduced his food to avoid dependence. He knew our opening hours and would sometimes ask for food, other times just put in an appearance at opening and closing to say hello or drop by for a nap, now above the shop during the day. Roosting above us at night to keep an eye on the alley. Solly started courting, his much shyer Significant Other perching above the shop with him but it was Solly who ruled the roost, comfortable with our presence and occasionally nutting any other pigeon that tried to move in.
He rarely came into the shop, fortunately, but sat outside listening at our talk on the Beatles one night. Occasionally we would hear a plant pot crash in the garden.
Sadly, there was the day... we didn't know it was Solly at first. The raptors in the city - you know the ones nesting at NTU? - have to eat, and they prey on pigeons. There was not much left. We guessed it was Solly as he disappeared at the same time. A few days later there was the remains of what was probably Significant Other.
We're not really big fans of pigeons, but felt there was little choice but to add a feathered member to the team. We rather miss him.

28/09/2026

No ISBN on this item so it won't appear on our website. This is a large format newspaper featuring photographs of .... well, do you recognise it? Certain you have passed it a few times on the train. Have a look when next in the shop, it's next to local. It includes photographs by Callum McNab, and an introductory essay by architectural historian Chris Matthews

25/09/2026

Why we don't stock certain books... Of course, Five Leaves is a small bookshop so we have to be selective, but there are certain books that we would like to stock and don't. An example is this book, a major title. The retail price is £22.00 but you can buy
a copy in Tesco for £11. Other supermarkets too. We can't blame you for doing that. The price to us from the publisher would be £12.10 as they discriminate against small shops on discount. So if we wanted to stock the book it would be cheaper for us to buy it at Tesco. We have no idea what discount Tesco has been given. The other issue is that there is a date embargo on the book - if we sold it before publication date we would be in trouble with the publisher. Again and again the supermarkets ignore embargos. We get told if we break such embargos our continued supply of titles will be at risk. Supermarkets breaking embargos? Nothing happens. In the good old days there was retail price maintenance, rather than a race to the bottom on price - a system called the Net Book Agreement. Nowadays we know certain titles will be falsely priced at a high price because they will mostly then be sold at a discount. We're more specialist than mainstream so we are not hit as badly as general independents who would love to stock books like this in quantity, but can't. It's not fair. Of course capitalism isn't fair, but publishers could do more to ensure that independent bookshops are not priced out of the market.

25/09/2026

Monday coming

Poet Julie Burke shares her poem A Stitch in Time, in preparation f...