Our Team
Charles Tongue. Owner.
I opened Stroud Bookshop in 1992, having moved to Stroud because I loved the landscape, the Laurie Lee connection and the low-key arty/alternative atmosphere.
All my working life, publishing, wholesaling and retailing, I have been involved with books. As I look around the Bookshop I see all the accumulated creativity, intellect and imagination of human history. I love books because they are full of new skills to learn, they can take me travelling to different worlds, or help me to understand and empathise with the daily lives around me.
Everything that made Stroud appealing: celebration of nature, diverse and energetic community, environmental activism, are now mainstream, and Stroud has played its part in achieving this, notably through the Transition Town movement, the local founders of Extinction Rebellion and Polly Higgins’ campaign to stop Ecocide. I feel so lucky to be running the Bookshop in this exciting and innovative community.
Frances Caminada.
I have enjoyed working with books for many years. Starting in London in the late 80s, I helped run two different independent children's bookshops in Wimbledon and Fulham. I then moved to Stroud and when both my daughters started school I began work in the Children's Bookshop. It was great to be working there during the Harry Potter phenomena. I remember the long queues of children and adults at midnight.
When the Children's Bookshop merged with the Stroud Bookshop I had to quickly learn all about adult literature. I really enjoy my work here where I can combine my interest in illustration and the pleasure in reading.
Barbara Clarke.
I have been working with books, mainly children’s, since 1992. I started working at Stroud Children’s Bookshop in November 1999, and enjoyed helping customers with my knowledge of children’s book. The two shops amalgamated in May 2013. I could still help customers with children’s book but then learnt more about adult books.
I have always been a keen reader, enjoying a wide variety of books; spy stories, thrillers and real life stories. Robert Harris, Kate Atkinson and Hilary Mantel are some of my favourite authors. Lately, in these strange times, I like to escape to another world the author creates. In doing so it is surprising what you can learn.
Stroud Bookshop being independent means we have a loyal following of customers. Long may it remain.
Sylvie Planel.
I have worked at Stroud Bookshop since 2018. I love discovering new books with customers, and finding the right book for someone. My main interest is creative non-fiction writing, from stories of journeys on foot to biographies of 20th century radical feminists or pieces of poetic nature writing. I'm also a keen reader of contemporary fiction.
For me, reading is about exploring the world under a different light and expanding our horizons, but it's also a way of understanding ourselves. My favourite books at the moment are Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie, Letters from Tove Jansson and Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.
As well as working in the bookshop, I'm freelance translator and proof-reader.
Anna Smith.
Before ever I was a bookseller, I was a bookworm.
I’ve worked in bookselling for most of my adult life; most of my adult life has happened since I joined Stroud Bookshop in 1997. Stroud Bookshop has, in effect, helped to make me, as I have made my life, my living, selling books. I’ve been a student, made a family, made friends, and read, and sold, a LOT of books. And after all this time, I still love it. There’s a tremendous satisfaction to be found when someone comes back to the shop, having enjoyed something they’ve bought at my recommendation, to say ‘I LOVED it, give me another’. If there’s half a chance you’re in my reading tribe, I am absolutely going to recruit you.
There is, of course, the professional frustration that I am NEVER going to be able to keep up with all I want to read. I have made my peace with that. It’s FINE, really.
I like my fiction beautiful and strange. I dip in and out of the non-fiction pool as the fancy strikes me.
Kate Young.
I joined the long-established and intimidatingly experienced Stroud Bookshop team in late 2019, to offer a little extra cover during the Stroud Book Festival. I was thrilled to properly join the team in mid-2020.
I particularly enjoy reading fiction in translation, contemporary fiction written by women, and books set in the mid-20th century about multi-generational families in big houses. Some of my long-standing favourites are Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, and Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. I’m also passionate about food writing - I love Diana Henry, M. F. K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin, Nigella Lawson, and Samin Nosrat.
When I’m not in the bookshop, I’m working on my own books. My third cookbook, The Little Library Christmas, will be out in October.