The Aardvark Blog

In memoriam Paul Williams,London Bookfair
10/03/2017

We received the sad news a couple of days ago that Paul Williams the electrician both to Aardvark Books and the Mortimer Country Food Fair had died after a long illness. Paul was a massive help to us over the years, and his good nature and practicality became an essential feature of the preparations for Mortimer Country. He always managed to find a solution, and his bills were always extraordinarly reasonable (a great boon for a fair that always teetered on the edge of financial sustainability. Paul also worked in our own home and that of other friends and family. He is a massive loss to the area and to all of us who knew him.

My email box is filling up with news and announcements from the London Bookfair. It is always nice  to head up to London and find out what is going on in the rest of the book world. This year there seems to be reasonable grounds for optimism with book sales up and the book regaining a position of cultural importance that it hasn't had for some years. I have even found that months have gone by without people asking me if I think that the physical book will imminentlyl disappear. Bookfair week also means lots of art books and these will start to hit the shelves from the end of next week onwards. Lets hope for a good haul.