Welcome
Heron Books took flight earlier in 2025 from our original home in The Clifton Arcade.
Find us in our new(ish) heronry at 7a Regent Street, Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4HW.
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-Saturday: 9.30am-5.30pm
Sunday: 11am-4pm
7a Regent Street
Clifton, Bristol
BS8 4HW
0117 401 1717
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News
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Play Time – 19 June 2026
Even more so than usual, it is play time here in The Heronry. Between Independent Bookshop Week shenanigans for the author Tom Cox, a picture book launch in honour of a mole, a persistent architect great in kindness and endeavour, and some concern about whether everyone else can see the young girl who has taken…
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Put Seashells In Your Socks – 12 June 2026
Do you like ducks, hills, the sound of (funk) music, vinyl, church bells, folklore, post offices, onion bhajis, Morris Minors, clogs, bogs, mogs and the feel of the word ‘twazzock’? I thought so. Also knitting, cows, books and cemeteries? As if I needed to ask. Independent Bookshop Week begins tomorrow and we are celebrating all…
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Fever Pitch – 5 June 2026
In Paris, Geoff Dyer reads on the grass in Le Jardin des Tuileries. Tourists photograph the garden’s statues. Joggers pass them without looking. A group of boys annoys everyone else by enjoying a kickabout. The sculptures are of mythical or biblical characters. The statues endure. They struggle. Impossibly perfect bodies radiate power even as they…
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In Eliot’s Midst – 29 May 2025
I write to you from the town and world of Middlemarch. Judging by this week’s conversations and sales, many of you are joining me, some returning, some making your first foray, thanks to that Guardian list or last week’s dispatch, whichever is the more influential. How I love being back here. George Eliot got it…
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Transient Lists, Enduring Books – 22 May 2026
Upon my word, how I love a good argument. And a good list. One causing several of the other is ideal. Pour me a drink and let’s get stuck in. The Guardian’s ‘100 Best Novels of All Time’ (I think they appreciate the silliness of the title, having published the same one with different content…
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Dear Historians – 15 May 2026
In Dear Historian by Joff Winterhart, the academic Margaret Crypt is courted by a television production company, Giant Past, run by the self-obsessed if charismatic ‘personality’/historian Allan Hands. Margaret thinks the work of a historian involves removing oneself as much as possible, being secondary to one’s subject. Allan, who likes dressing in period costume and…