Welcome to West End Lane Books’ website, your local independent bookshop in the heart of West Hampstead, North London.
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Helen Simpson | Eleanor Updale | Ruth Rendell
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Weather News: Large Depression Forecast over West End Lane
It struck us recently just how many of our recent staff recommendations in the shop could be described as either dark or depressing. So, just in time for the summer holidays, we've prepared a delightful selection for you to enjoy—perhaps over a drink—or even several. Click here for more...
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Helen Simspon touches down at West End Lane Books
As one of the foremost contemporary short story writers, the charming Helen Simpson certainly knows how to deliver her lines with maximum punch and she held her audience rapt in pin-drop silence during her recent reading from the impressive collection In-Flight Entertainment at West End Lane Books.
Click here to read more about our recent event.
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Author Updale charms her audience
It's no mystery why Eleanor Updale's books are huge word-of-mouth successes and award winners: kids love their detail, colour and zest and parents can rely on them to be brilliant and absorbing to read out loud...and educate their children by stealth.
Click here to find out what happened at our event this June...
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Grab a (signed) Gruffalo
Julia Donaldson drops into West End Lane Books!
The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed West End Lane Books as the setting for the Politics Show's interview with Julia Donaldson this week.
Naturally, we were thrilled to welcome this doyenne of childrens' literature into our shop for a spot of discussion on the importance of child literacy...and, equally naturally, we offered her a nice big pile of books to sign.
So, if you want to pick up a very a special treat to treasure for a littlie in your life—or, indeed, if you have Nick Clegg spending the night—come and get them while you can!
To watch Julia Donaldson on the BBC Politics Show, filmed at West End Lane Books, click here.
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Rendell gives it to us straight
Ruth Rendell, and her alter ego Barbara Vine, has had the sort of career
that most writers can only dream of: scores of super-high-qualty novels, each maintaining an unflagging standard of plot, characterisation and a seismic grip on the reader.
Millions have read her, watched her, been influenced and awed by her and so it was with a sense of real privilege that a packed West End Lane Books welcomed her for one of her rare readings recently. Click for more...
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The politics of partying on Election night
While the great and the good pondered the future of British politics (and still do at the time of writing), down at West End Lane Books on election night 2010, the future of the world itself was safeguarded...by local author Anthony McGowan and a large party of children (and parents).
Reading from his new bestseller, Einstein's Underpants and How They Saved the World, McGowan was on cracking form...
...Click here for more...
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2 for £10 and Sale Promotions
UPDATE: Since launching our highly successful sale and 2 for £10 promotions, both sections have now been vastly expanded.
Even more new additions to the ever-popular 2 for £10 range include such diverse titles as James Runcie's novel Canvey Island; Great Dream of Heaven, a collection of short stories from Sam Shepard (similar subject matter to, but less well-known than his plays); black humour from Tim Lott's The Love Secrets of Don Juan; ± Nothing; autobiographical musings from Stockport's favourite son, Paul Morley; and amazingly inventive fiction from Rana Dasgupta in Tokyo Cancelled.
Still on offer in our 2 for £10 promotion is a large selection from the special edition Penguin Celebrations catalogue (usually £7.99 each), and a selection from the Introducing books range, titles by best-selling and upcoming authors of the moment (such as Jonathan Safran-Foer, Anita Shreve, Susanna Clarke, Irene Nemirovsky and Ismail Kadare), as well as classics (including P. G. Wodehouse, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Patrick Hamilton).
Sale Books Section
New bargains here include Rodchenko: Experiments for the Future (Diaries, Essays, Letters and Other Writings); Alexander Walker's Icons in the Fire: The Rise and Fall of Practically Everyone in the British Film Industry 1984-2000; The Golden Age: Poems of the Spanish Renaissance, translated by Edith Grossman; Nigel Rees's A Man About a Dog: Euphemisms & Other Examples of Verbal Squeamishness. And from our art books display (also in the sale) we recommend Western Amerykanski: Polish Poster Art and the Western.
