Bookseller feature: Sam Barnes of Books & Ink, Winchcombe

"What really makes bookselling not a job but a vocation and a calling, is the joy of witnessing those moments of serendipitous discovery when customers fall in love with books right before your eyes ..."

Sam Barnes opened Books & Ink Bookshop in 2005 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and has since re-located the shop to Winchcombe in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. She was our very first independent bookseller guest during her Banbury days, contributing a review back in 2018; now we're pleased to welcome her back to tell us what makes her Winchcombe shop so special.

The older one becomes, the quicker time passes. I’m sure there’s a good literary quote about this but I don’t have one coming to mind. It seems unbelievable that it’s already more than six years since I moved the bookshop from Banbury to Winchcombe. With an energy I didn’t know I had, and with my incredibly supportive family mucking in with all the least glamorous jobs, together we renovated a run-down but majestic 18th -century building – former restaurant, with dilapidated bed-sit type rooms above – into the beautiful bookshop space I have now, with the added bonus of a two bed book and nature-themed short term holiday let above, our much-loved Book Nook (ideal for writing retreats, wink wink). We have finally found our forever home. 

Winchcombe is the reason why we moved the bookshop. It’s an unspoilt small town in the northwest of the Cotswolds. It’s charming; full of character and history, yet undiscovered enough to have a friendly, active local community, which is what we fell in love with. For visitors there’s a wealth of delights on the doorstep – all within a few miles you can find majestic Sudeley Castle, burial place of Henry VIII’s last wife, Hailes Abbey, Belas Knapp neolithic burial mound, the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway, with a train stop at Winchcombe one mile from the town centre, Cleeve Hill which is the second highest hill of the Cotswolds, outstanding for walks and views, our historic St. Peter’s Church, complete with super grotesques, one of which is known as the “Mad Hatter”. If all that isn’t enough, Winchcombe is lauded as “The Walking Capital of the Cotswolds” due to the array of foothpaths crossing the town and the beautiful countryside around. 

Today I sit in this inviting, tranquil space – with ancient beams and honey-coloured flagstone floor which has seen foot traffic for more than 250 years and numerous trades come and go from this building. It’s a Farmers Market Saturday (which I try to open for but I can’t always make it in on Saturdays) so there’s hustle and bustle outside. I get a few passing friendly waves from locals who haven’t time to call in today and then the doorbell jingles and my first visitors of the day arrive. They are on holiday and immediately exclaim about how beautiful the shop is and how it’s bigger on the inside. Aside: I hear this comment so often maybe I should re-name the shop Tardis Books! 

Thus starts a sunny Cotswolds shop day with the perfect mix of local customers and tourists from around the globe – my favourite kind of day. I especially enjoy occasionally trying out a word or two of German which I have been trying to learn now for a few years. My least favourite bookshop days are rainy days. In Banbury I enjoyed a bookshop rainy day as I didn’t have display tables and the shop was much bigger. Nowadays I have books out on display and they’re a prime target to be dripped on (!!) so I spend rainy days in a state of anxious high alert as books and water are not a happy mix. 

The bookshop has gone through many changes over its 20 years, starting out as second hand books and new stationery (hence the name) and has now settled into a focus on antiquarian and illustrated books, themed vintage books from Penguin and Puffin paperbacks, to old Everyman editions, Ladybird and Observer’s books, collectable children’s books from times gone by – which I love hearing people reminisce about as they wander – plus other themed displays as they come my way. I also keep a large selection of more modern second hand paperback literature, crime fiction and children’s novels, a well-stocked local history section, plus a small array of hand-picked new books. 

Vintage children's books

We have an extra space which we have been slowly renovating for the past few years and this will be opened later this year as a dedicated room for history, military history and related subjects like politics. I’m excited to get this space open soon as I have some outstanding stock sitting in storage, waiting to come and fill the shelves. When you have your own bookshop it can be enormous fun to let your personality spill out onto the shop floor from time to time!! ... Since re-locating, the bookshop has evolved into stocking Willie’s Cacao dark chocolate. Willie is in the process of moving his artisan chocolate factory to nearby Herefordshire so there will be a local connection but his dark chocolates also happen to be my favourite vegan-friendly range and I like having a supply close at hand! 

Vintage teddy bears have also descended on the shop and have been a huge hit with customers of all ages. I adore seeking them out, giving them a “Teddy Bear Spa Day” and then finding them new forever homes. Prints, original art, wood engravings, antique etchings, maps and other printed ephemera have also found a space in the shop and I’m currently thrilled to have a number of original paintings made for Ladybird Books by the artist Roger Hall. Outreach events, like book fairs, have had to take a step back while we navigate our way around personal challenges that came our way with the outbreak of the Covid pandemic; so too my website stock. But we are instead thoroughly enjoying running our Book Nook apartment and meeting all our lovely bookish guests from all walks of life. 

Vintage Ladybirds

We don’t yet live in Winchcombe but when we move to the town I’m looking forward to being able to offer longer opening hours, including evening openings, so more book lovers can discover the shop. Writing this piece has been an interesting reflection for me on 20 years as a bookseller and all that that encompasses – curator, book guardian, researcher, matchmaker, reviewer, rescuer, re-homer, marketer, accountant, building renovator, designer, and hostess – but above all, what has really makes bookselling be not a job but a vocation and a calling, is the joy of witnessing those moments of serendipitous discovery when customers fall in love with books right before your eyes. This is what I hope to be doing for at least another 20 years to come.

For our first independent bookseller feature in April 2018, when Sam was in her Banbury shop, she recommended In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

Independent Bookseller feature No.1: Sam Barnes of BOOKS & INK, Banbury, picks IN THIS GRAVE HOUR by Jacqueline Winspear

This is the first post in a new occasional feature - we're inviting independent booksellers to tell us about their favourite books. A big thank you to Sam Barnes for starting us off! If you're an independent bookshop and would like to join in, please contact us - we'll be very pleased to welcome you.

Sam Barnes is the owner of Books & Ink Bookshop, an independent bookshop in Banbury with second hand, antiquarian and new books. Sam opened the shop in 2005 and runs it full time, with a bit of help here and there from family! When not cataloguing stock and running the shop, Sam’s a voracious reader, an occasional review writer, a collector of Edward Ardizzone books and ephemera, and loves to get out exploring the great outdoors with a pair of walking boots and a camera. The bookshop is open Tuesdays to Saturdays but the website is open 24/7.

Sunday 3rd September, 1939, 11:15 am: Neville Chamberlain declares that Britain is now at war with Germany. People across the country sit gathered around wireless radios to hear the pronouncement. Maisie Dobbs joins her dearest friend Priscilla and Priscilla’s family to hear the devastating news; adults, all affected in some way by the previous war, exchange anxious glances with one another, while Priscilla’s teenage boys react in a more excitable way.

This is the opening scene for the 13th Maisie Dobbs mystery from Jacqueline Winspear; a historical mystery series based on the eminently likeable psychologist and private investigator, Maisie. Turning back the clock to book one, the series begins with Maisie setting up her own private detective practice in London in 1929. An independent, self-employed young woman setting up in professional practice in the 1920s - brilliant; I loved Maisie straight away. From the beginning you sense in Maisie a sensitivity, spirituality and sadness - all lending to her interesting and empathetic character - and as the novels progress, she develops into an investigator with a talent for solving crimes where compassion and understanding of the human psyche are frequently involved.

In this novel, frequent mention is made of Maisie’s backstory; her time spent as a frontline nurse in France during the 1914-1918 war and before that, her time spent in service as a young girl before she met a mentor who steered her onto her career path as private investigator. Both elements are important in the story, as thoughts of the first war are uppermost in the minds of everyone old enough to remember, and Maisie’s time in service regularly proves useful to her in her detective work, with her unique ability to find common ground with people of all social backgrounds.

Maisie is called upon by the Belgian Embassy to investigate the murder of a Belgian national, a refugee in Britain from the first war. A police investigation has been launched but, because of the pressures on the security services, the police are content to conclude an open-and-shut case of violent robbery. The Belgian Embassy aren’t happy with the conclusion and hire Maisie to do further digging.

It’s a time of upheaval in London; streets and playgrounds are quiet as children have been evacuated to the countryside; the skies are filled with immense floating shadow-creating barrage balloons; people are nervous and many men and women who came through the first war at great cost and personal sacrifice are now having to endure seeing their barely adult boys sign up to the forces. Maisie’s father and stepmother, living in the Kentish countryside, have some evacuees billeted with them; one of whom is a nameless silent little girl who arrived on the train from London but who does not appear on any records. Amidst trying to solve the case of the Belgian refugee before more murders take place, Maisie and her assistants also take it upon themselves to try and find out the story of the lost little evacuee, to see if they can find a living relative and work out where she has come from and how they can best help her. Themes of loss and displacement are to the fore in this mystery, making the story feel very relevant today, with the plight of refugees, and refugee children in particular, being uppermost in the thoughts and hearts of many.

Jacqueline Winspear creates believable and empathetic characters and paces her stories just right for the theme - page-turning but not at the expense of characters, descriptive writing or historical interest. Maisie comes through each case with grace, humility and prowess - not always successful in her cases but always changed in some small or subtle way, developing with each novel into an interesting and warm human character. While not ‘cosy-crime’ exactly, the series are a light read and the crimes not dwelt up on in great depth - no gore, no terror or forensic uglies. I can’t read (or watch) that sort of crime; it leaves me with an ingrained fear for days. I’d recommend Maisie Dobbs to even the most crime-sensitive readers - and, in fact, all of the readers I’ve recommended Maisie to in the bookshop, have come back for more doses, so that’s a pretty good testament.

In This Grave Hour is published by Allison & Busby.