Welcome
Heron Books, Clifton’s only independent bookshop, can be found in the historic Clifton Arcade on Boyce’s Avenue.
The shop stocks a range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books, 4000 of them in a carefully planned cosy space. Heron Books offers personal recommendations and the creation of bespoke gift lists for special occasions, and runs events, including a monthly poetry series and several book groups. Where not already on the shelves, books can be ordered for home delivery by Royal Mail and, if you live really nearby, staff can exceptionally cycle over to deliver them personally.
The shop is a welcoming space. We like nothing more than talking about books; if the book in question features a heron, all the better.
Opening Hours
Monday-Friday: 10am-5:30pm
Saturday: 9am-6pm
Sunday: 11am-4pm
Unit 5, The Clifton Arcade
Boyce’s Avenue
Bristol, BS8 4AA
0117 431 0616
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News
Brimful of Hats – 16/11/2024
‘My shoes are worn out,’ Natalia Ginzburg writes in her essay collection, The Little Virtues, ‘and the friend I live with at the moment also has worn-out shoes. When we are together we often talk about shoes. If I talk about the time when I shall be an old, famous writer, she immediately asks me…
Feed the Birds Crumble – 09/11/2024
My theme is joy. Herewith, an offering. I have been thinking about the experience of joy: how it differs from happiness, elation or wonder; how it lasts, or does not; what it is to recall the feeling or to relive it; the easy association of joy with music, with odes, choirs; its scent, unique for…
The Meaning of Gliff – 02/11/2024
Gliff is a horse rescued by two children. Gliff may yet rescue them. He was facing the abattoir. They face ‘re-education’. Gliff is a momentary resemblance, a transient glance, an impulse. Gliff means to glimpse, to frighten, to glare. It’s a misspelling (did you mean ‘glyph’?), a mishearing (did you mean ‘cliff’?), but not a…
Duck Women – 26/10/2024
I am relieved to know that I’ll never meet a rhizodont. A seven-metre-long predatory fish with huge teeth could only be more terrifying if you told me that it had evolved to move on land too so that I am safe nowhere. Oh, it did. Brilliant. I thought I’d covered the stuff of nightmares last…
A Heron Hollers – 19/10/2024
Step into the theatre with me. Not past the looming columns and through the gilded front doors. We are not nodding to the doorman, removing our hats, adjusting our neckties and settling into the stalls. Nor are we climbing into the gods to peer down while holding tightly to the rails. Look for the street…
Bookshop Day Everyday – 12/10/2024
Wishing you a very happy Bookshop Day 2024, a concocted concept which I fully endorse along with such events, doubtless already in your diary, as: International Day of Rural Women (15th October – check it out); CAPS LOCK DAY (22nd October – NO, SERIOUSLY); National Pumpkin Day (26th October – I don’t know whose nation;…