Fleur Sinclair is the owner of the award-winning Sevenoaks Bookshop in Kent. She is a past President of the Booksellers Association for the UK and Ireland, winner of the 2025 Futurebook Leader of the Year, and sits on the board of UK Bookshop.org and the advisory committee for the Booker Prize. Before bookselling, Fleur worked in the fashion industry as a photographer’s agent.
As a bookshop owner it’s almost impossible to think of ‘favourite books’ – I’ve read so much, and books can hit so differently depending on when and where you read them. These three books – from my past, present and future – chime very much with my current mood.
Past: Waterlog by Roger Deakin
There have been so many books written about nature and swimming in recent years – some I’ve really enjoyed like Freya Bromley’s My Swimming Year. But Roger’s Waterlog feels like the trailblazer. And unlike so many of the books that followed, he doesn’t frame his swimming journey with personal healing, it simply feels like a beautiful celebration of nature and people – with so much of his writing stating exactly what I’m looking for whenever I take a plunge into the icy Cornish sea or the beautiful lake at Penshurst. Inspirational!
Buy it here.
Present: Finding Albion by Zakia Sewell
This is what I’m reading at the moment and I’m loving it! For anyone struggling to align themself with any sort of British identity in these current fractious, turbulent times, this book might also hit the spot for you. Folk, seasonal rites, mystic stone circles – this is celebration of our ancient land that exposes so much in our current landscape that are direct fallouts from events going way back – the enclosures, onset of capitalism and the industrial revolution etc. etc. So I’m reading this on a journey with the author, to find love, unity and belonging rooted in a time long ago.
Buy it here.
Future: Whistler by Ann Patchett
Oh my goodness, this is a wonderful book! A family novel that begins with accidentally bumping into an estranged stepfather in a New York museum, then goes back to tell the story of a childhood, of complex family relations. Cinematic in a Nora Ephron-ish way, it’s a story told with so much, heart and kindness – love positively radiates out from this book! Published this summer, I know so many readers across different generations are going to find joy in it. My bookshop colleague loves it, a visiting author said his whole family fell in love with it, and now my daughter is reading and loving it – lucky future readers, you have a treat in store!
Buy it here.
