Mayor and Mayoress Support Independent Bookshop Week

We were honoured to receive a visit from the Mayor and Mayoress of Dorchester, Councillor Les Fry BEM and Mrs Julie Fry BEM, yesterday (Wednesday 17 June) to show support for Independent Bookshop Week. The Mayor and Mayoress interviewed us for Keep 106 Radio with the help of Andy Worth.

The week-long campaign run by the Booksellers’ Association, which is in its 20th year, is a celebration of indie bookshops across the UK and Ireland, aiming to highlight the vital role they play in their communities.

Earlier in the year, the Booksellers’ Assocation selected 20 official ‘Bookshop Champions’ across the UK and Ireland based on their innovation, community focus, and commitment to reading - and we were delighted to be named as one of the 20 champions for 2026.

To showcase the importance of independent bookshops, we have been running a week-long programme of events, offers, and community initiatives, including the book launch for a local author, a book quiz night and raffle to raise money for Mid-Dorset Mencap (also based in Trinity Street).

We also wanted to say thank you to our amazing customers and so have been offering 10% of all books all week, together with giving out free £5 book tokens (on sales more than £20) and ‘Pablo & Splash’ activity packs (with sales of any children’s book). These offers continue to run until Satuday 20 June.

And, we are using this week to launch a big new community project - The Young Reviewers’ Club. This is an initiative that is designed to encourage reluctant readers aged between 5 and 14 years old from the local area to develop a love of books and reading through the provision of free books in return for reviews. Today, we are writing to local schools and our own customers to help identify 50 local children who may benefit from this initiative - if you want more information, please email us or call in the shop. We want to say thank you to Penguin Random House for selecting our project to help fund earlier in the year through their Children’s Bookshop Grant for the National Year of Reading.

We are hugely grateful to the Mayor and Mayoress for their support for the shop and, in particular, for the Young Reviewers’ Club.

Thank you also to Andy Worth and everyone at Keep 106 for interviewing us and to the Dorset Echo for running a story about our Independent Bookshop Week events.

Photos courtesy of Councillor Les Fry BEM, Andy Worth, and David Tomlinson