Staff Profile – Paul
15 May 2026
Get to know Paul our office manager
Paul is our office manager and admin factotum. He is only occasionally to be found visiting the shop, usually with Toffee, the shop’s. (non) working cocker spaniel. Paul has always had an interest in history and most of his reading is of history non fiction, but with the occasional thriller for light relief.
1. ‘Lord of the Rings’: Tolkien’s masterpiece evolving from many of his lived experiences: his aunt lived at a cottage called “Bag End”, both of his parents died when he was young, he invented new “languages” with his cousins, he enjoyed mountain hiking in Switzerland and he served as an officer on the Somme. Whilst Tolkien was always interested in folklore, I think his experiences in the trenches most influenced the Lord of the Rings.
2. ‘The Anarchy’: William Dalrymple. It’s a history of (at least) two cultures but reads like a sweeping novel. You can almost hear and smell the India of old, and taste the ambition of The East India Company. The book reveals the rifts in the composition of both sides, exposes the best and the worst of them and consequently of human nature, and through such exposition lets us better understand bodies politic, both then and now, both home and abroad.
3. To while away the time on the desert island, I think I would need poetry, so I have opted for, ‘The Rattle Bag’ (an anthology) edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. The sheer breadth of inclusion from Shelley to Shakespeare, from Dante Alighieri to Stevie Smith, would keep anyone’s interest for a long time whilst gazing out to sea for rescue.