'Quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for' - Edna O'Brien. Independent bookshop (est. in 1957) Chelsea, London.
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A month before Cook was intending to embark on his second voyage, he took his ship, the Resolution, for a test run on the Thames. He had a particular reason for concern: Joseph Banks, the naturalist on the Endeavour, had grandly assembled a staff of fifteen and built a superstructure on the ship. Finding that it rendered the ship hopelessly top-heavy and unsuitable, Cook instructed that it be…
It is impossible to tell from Renoir’s celebrated portrait of two delightful, pampered-looking girls that its subject — and their family at large — are destined for a horrible end; one of the girls would be murdered in Auschwitz, by then an elderly lady. The world of Catherine Ostler's The Renoir Girls is that of the super-rich Jewish bankers of late C19th France, great patrons of the arts and…
Simard is a genius of modern forest ecology. Her first book, Finding the Mother Tree, was at the vanguard of humanity’s understanding of the interconnectedness of trees and we were honoured that she could come to Sandoe’s to talk to us on our podcast. In this second book, When the Forest Breathes, published in March this year, the Canadian scientist recounts her ongoing research, with profound…
Our first podcast for 2026 is with Jane Rogoyska , the author of Hotel Exile: Paris in the Shadow of War. Divided into three parts, it tells the story of the influx of mostly German refugees into Paris following the rise of the Nazis, and how the Hotel Lutetia, a grand hotel on the Left Bank, became a focus for them in organizing some kind of resistance to the regime at home. After the German…
We are delighted to have Juliet back on our podcast. Her books have been regular bestsellers at Sandoe’s: The Perfect Summer, A House Full of Daughters, Frostquake, which she spoke about on the podcast in 2020. Her new book looks at the dynamics of corrosive secrets that women have been obliged to keep, how those secrets fit into a broader social context and how exposing them has been a release…
A mentor to Le Corbusier, Ozenfant was an artist and critic who ran art schools in Paris and London in the 1920s and ’30s. Highly regarded, he knew everyone; Leonora Carrington was a student, Henry Moore worked for him, Paolozzi admired him. Despite his connections, energy and talent, his star dimmed and he passed into obscurity. This short, beautifully written book is a superb resuscitation of a…
We are delighted to bring you a new episode of our podcast: a conversation with Jonas Hassen Khemiri. He is a Swedish novelist and playwright, a teacher on the creative writing course at NYU and a finalist for the National Book Award. His writing is warm and playful, often concerned with his own Swedish-Tunisian heritage and with the joys and exasperations of being a writer, a father and a partner…
Horatio is an outstanding writer of literary non-fiction. He’s written before about life on a container ship and on an icebreaker, three memoirs, two important books on acute mental crisis, a glorious book on Bach, a book on curlews and swallows, three delightful books for young children and a couple more on Welsh myths — all in addition to regular journalism. With the small boats crisis as its…
Bouverie's first book, Appeasing Hitler, was a tremendous success. His second — a history of the alliance that won the war — is once again fascinating and beautifully written. He spoke to Johnny about the destruction of the French fleet by the British (they had been allies months earlier), the betrayal of Poland, and the significance of public opinion for democracies at war; offensives that would…
Dalton, who has worked for over a decade as a parliamentary and Foreign Office policy advisor and speech-writer, found herself raising a leveret in lockdown. Her approach was to intervene as little as possible and allow the animal to remain wild – yet it still comes to snooze in her house, and has now raised leverets that treat Dalton’s small converted barn as their own. She spoke to Arabella…
