Behind the Bookshelves

We return to Portland, Oregon, and speak to Rachel Phillips and Roger Hucek from Burnside Rare Books. They specialize in 20th century literature and signed books, and they have been selling books together since 2006. We discuss their bookselling evolution, the importance of photography, book fairs and much more.

We're at the ballpark, talking baseball. Bookseller Bobby Plapinger, from Ashland in Oregon, joins us. Bobby is a specialist baseball book dealer. Babe Ruth, early baseball books, cards vs books, and the belated interest in the Negro Leagues are just some of the topics we discuss.

Learn how John Stone, from the University of Barcelona, discovered a rare 1634 edition of Shakespeare's play The Two Noble Kinsmen, co-written with John Fletcher, in the library of a small Scottish college in Spain.

Today, we are Flintshire in the UK, visiting the UK's only residential library. We speak with Peter Francis who is the Warden and Director of Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, which is a few miles west of Chester. William Ewart Gladstone served 4 separate terms as Britain's prime minster between in 1868 and 1894. Today his personal library is available to the public, housed in a building where you can also spend the night. Join us to learn more about this remarkable library.

Today, we head to County Mayo on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland and speak to Roger Grimes, who is the co-owner of a bookshop and antiques business located in Mulranny. Vanessa Parker Rare Books and its sister business Greenway Antiques share a beautiful white-walled cottage. Vanessa does the books and Roger sells the antiques. Join us to hear about life and business in this beautiful part of the world.

We are joined by author and printmaker Nick Hayes, who has written a book called The Book of Trespass. Nick takes us into some of England’s grandest country estates… as a trespasser. He writes about how easy it to trespass and what he encountered while trespassing. He also writes at length about the history of trespassing in England – from the years following the Norman Conquest to today’s campaigns over the right to roam through the British countryside. We discuss the history of land ownership and the importance of having access to the countryside.

We are talking about bookselling in the Balkans with Ian Dodds, who is an AbeBooks bookseller based in Bulgaria. Ian and his wife left the UK in 2007 to live and work in Bulgaria, and we hear about how they established an online bookselling business in a mountain village close to the border with Greece.

In our latest podcast, we speak to Church of Scotland minister Richard Frazer, who is the author of Travels With a Stick, a book about walking the Camino de Santiago. We discuss blisters, Robert Macfarlane’s influence on walking literature, John Muir’s dislike of the word 'hiking', and why pilgrimages are important.

We return to the subject of things found in used books. Our guest is Emma Smreker, a school teacher from Oklahoma City, who collects secondhand books in order to discover the forgotten things left inside. When she comes across something particularly poignant, such as a letter or a photo or a poem, she researches the item and tries to return it to the original owner. Learn about the remarkable connections that Emma is making through these forgotten objects.

We visit the theatre and discuss Shakespearean deaths with author Kathryn Harkup, who has written a book called Death by Shakespeare. Kathryn looked at how the Bard killed off his characters and asked if these deaths were realistic. She considered science, medicine, disease, weaponry, poisons, crimes and punishments, and Elizabethan history. We discuss Shakespeare's bloodiest play, how he didn't always get it right, the Bard's stagecraft skills and how he probably got some assistance from his son-in-law. And also the ups and downs of being pursued by a bear.