Many of you will remember the hugely successful bookfest I attended back in February. I am delighted that my friend Stephen White has organised an EVEN BIGGER one this week. Even more exciting is the mini programme and memorabilia fair he is hosting within the main event.

In a nutshell, there are more than 100,000 books (children’s and adult) with huge, huge stocks of fiction and non-fiction. I have been helping him set up for the last couple of days and am absolutely in awe of the sheer size of some of the sections. There are massive transport and military sections, a huge foreign language section, more scifi than my local libraries have and, soooooo much fiction. This time, for the first time, he has thousands of brand new books too at bargain prices. So you are covered: adult or child, fiction and nonfiction, new or pre-loved!

BUT

What about the sports section?

There are over 1000 autobiographies and annuals, 20,000 plus programmes including literally thousands of big match issues. Likewise there are brand new and second hand programmes. Big numbers of Arsenal, Chelsea, Palace, Manchester United (all 1,000+each), then 500 plus Brentford, Fulham, West Ham and QPR. There are 3000/3500 non league programmes and (drum roll please) over 2,000 Gillingham programmes which are all individually bagged.

Likewise there are several hundred magazines with year after year of Four Four Two and, if you follow cricket almost FIFTY YEARS (sic) of Wisden and The (International) Cricketer. I counted several boxes of World

The other sports are not overlooked as I saw plenty of rugby memorabilia from both codes, as well as golf, F1, boxing and, well, pretty much everything else you can imagine.

See Stephen’s quick video

There’s free parking and the mill is on several public bus routes to Leeds and Bradford, Keighley and Shipley etc. If you are like Steve and a fan of trains as well as books, then I won’t need to tell you what line Aperley Bridge is on. Can’t carry everything? No worry, Stephen can arrange shipping.

See you all there, I hope