Robin Ince: The man, the books, the tour

I was going to write a brief paragraph to introduce Robin Ince but when I found this one on the Cosmic Shambles website, I thought it probably did a much better job than I could...

"Robin Ince is many things. An award winning comedian, an author, a broadcaster and a populariser of scientific ideas. The Guardian once declared him a ‘becardiganed polymath’ which seems about right. Robin is perhaps best known for co-hosting The Infinite Monkey Cage radio show with Brian Cox.  He is also the creator of the legendary ‘Nine Lessons and Carols For Curious People’ variety shows and their various spin offs.  For his work on projects like The Cosmic Shambles Network he was made an Honorary Doctor of Science by Royal Holloway, University of London."

Robin Ince is also a self confessed, book obsessed, Bibliomaniac. Our kind of person then! 

Bibliomaniac is Robin's account of his year touring over 100 bookshops around Britain to promote his book The Importance of Being Interested. He kept a blog of his visits to each shop and soon enough his next book, Bibliomaniac was born. 

We were lucky to be included on Robin's initial tour after Heather spotted his Twitter post asking for bookshops to be involved. As our first major event since we took on Westwood Books, we were pretty excited about our 'scoop'. Little did we know that this would also earn us a significant mention in the Bibliomaniac book. What an honour. 

Bibliomaniac itself is a total delight to read. (I know, I'm a bit biased as we are mentioned, and there is also some wonderful artwork of our shop by Natalie Kay Thatcher on the books endpapers.) Robin's absolute passion for books and bookshops shines through from start to finish. In fact, it won him the title of the Bookseller Association's inaugural Author of the Year Award 2022. Whenever booksellers gather, the conversation will eventually turn to those authors who are most supportive of our trade and Robin's name is always on that list. 

From championing bookshops and their booksellers, to listing out all of his irresistible bookish purchases, the book bounces along at pace describing his whirlwind year. You can't help but feel the enthusiasm oozing out of the pages. It even has a super handy list of both the bookshops visited AND the books mentioned at the back. That's the kind of dedication to bookishness we love. 

So of course, we are thrilled to be once again hosting Robin here at the bookshop to talk more about Bibliomaniac, his other books and anything else that crops up on the night. Anyone who has already seen Robin talk, will know how entertaining he is, so we can promise a brilliant night whatever happens. 

More information and tickets to the event are available here.