Word on the water book

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The bookshop moored at Kings Cross in 2018
Founded	2010
Founder	Paddy Screech, Jonathan Privett, and Stephane Chaudat
Headquarters	King’s Cross, London
Services	Bookshop/Venue
Website	www.wordonthewater.co.uk

Word on the Water is a bookshop situated on a barge that normally resides on Regent’s Canal in the King’s Cross area at Granary Square, London, although it has historically been based at other points along the London canal network. It has appeared in numerous publication’s lists of the best bookshops in the UK including The Washington Post and The Guardian.^[1][2] The bookshop’s home is a Dutch canal boat called Dianti dating back to the 1920s.^[3] As well as working as a bookshop, it regularly acts as a venue, hosting live music and poetry events.

History[edit]

The idea for the barge came in 2011 after two of the founders (Jon and Paddy) moored their houseboats next to each other.^[4] When they tried to buy the barge off Stephane (often referred to as Noy),^[5] he became their partner in the business.^[6] Because of Canal & River Trust rules, in its early days the boat had to move regularly between different points along the canal. The boat once nearly sunk on account of an accident with a valve.^[7]

As a migratory bookshop, moving every two weeks was described as being detrimental to its survival. Jonathan Privett, one of the co-founders noted that ‘People would come see it, see things they wanted to buy, see things they wanted to show their friends, they’d come back the next day and we’d be gone.’^[8] During this time, they describe having lived in a state of acute poverty, ‘often choosing between coffee or cigarettes, because we couldn’t have both.’^[9]

In 2014, the founders of Word on the Water applied for a permanent mooring licence from the England and Wales’ Canal & River Trust for Regent’s Canal in Paddington, however this was declined and instead given to British Land for the proposed creation of a coffee shop.^[10] A petition was set up, asking the Canal & Rivers Trust to provide Word on the Water with a mooring licence. Coverage looking into the dealings between a local real estate corporation and the Canal & River Trust featured in the Private Eye.^[11]

A permanent mooring was eventually granted in 2015 in King’s Cross, London.^[12][13] This was described as an enormous relief that got rid of the need to ‘literally unbuild the shop every 14 days…and rebuild it at 4’o clock in the morning’.^[11] Since then the business has been far more stable and has grown year upon year. In an interview with BookBrunch, they attributed some of their recent success to a mini book-boom and an influx of TikToks which have boosted the profile of the boat amongst both Londoners and tourists.^[14]

In 2022, the boat Dianti was refurbished and expanded, raising the roof and adding new metalwork. A feature length documentary was made about the process.^{[15] [16]}

Gallery[edit]

• 

  Inside of the Word on the Water’s canal boat. Books sprawl across dark wooden shelves.

• 

  Bookshop entrance sign

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Paddy Screech (one of the three founders) interview for Word on the Water

Coordinates: 51°32′07″N 0°07′25″W / 51.5354°N 0.1235°W

Word on the Water, Regent’s Canal, London

“So close your eyes while mother sings of the wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see those beautiful things as you sail on the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three – Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Nod.”

– From Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod, a Nursery Rhyme.

I’ve been in a lot of bookshops and sung their praises, but this one takes the cake. To be fair to them all, those very worthy other bookshops are often just as good as this one in terms of selection, decor and price, but all of them are lacking one essential ingredient that makes this competition not even close to a fair fight.  While every other bookshop I’ve been in has been firmly planted on solid ground, today I set foot inside a floating bookshop on the inside of a London Canal Boat.  You just can’t beat that.

I heard about this mystical creature some time ago and have been trying to track it down for ages.  It moves along Regent’s Canal which cuts through North London from Harrow in the West all the way to the Thames River Basin at Limehouse in the East.  On their facebook and twitter pages, Word on the Water post where on the canal they’re going to be and for how long.  Once or twice I’ve gone to City Road Basin in Angel to try to find them, but always seem to miss the canal boat.  However this time, I just happened upon them by accident.  When I saw the “Floating Book Sale” sign I had a feeling I had accidentally stumbled upon this thing I’d been wanting to find for so long.  This week, the boat is stationed just west of Camden Market on the canal, and a two minute walk from The Blackgull, another amazing Camden bookshop which works brilliantly as the second half of a double feature.  If you’re in that area at all this weekend, you should visit both of them and support two amazing businesses for less than you’d expect.

You might find that you hear the boat before you see the grey plume of smoke rising out from its chimney, as music always seems to be playing from the deck.  If you catch them at the right time, you might be lucky enough to hear one of their live music shows or the poetry readings for which they’re famous.  I’ve never been to one but I hear that music and poetry are shouted out from the deck of the boat to listeners down below and I can only imagine that it must be magical.  But on a weekday at lunch hour, classical music from speakers is perfect.  After examining the paperbacks on sale for £1 or £3 on the deck of the boat (bargain!) and the small selection at the helm, I crouched down and crawled into the cabin, where the magic happens.  The shop’s inside is warmed by the heat of the wood-burning oven in the corner and the couches around it are inviting and cozy.  To live in the cabin of this boat would be a dream come true.  You might be able to grab a spot on the couch and sit for a bit with a book if the cats aren’t monopolising the space.  Yes, there are two little cats (although perhaps there are more, but I only saw two) who live onboard and on this chilly January day they were huddled up on the couch close to the fire.  They must be used to visitors because they didn’t seem to notice me rummaging around the shelves of books that cover the walls.  For such a small space, there is a decent selection of secondhand books, all for very reasonable prices.  I bought Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood for £3.  As with most of the bookshops I frequent, you’re in a real-live establishment, not on Amazon, so they don’t have everything, but I think that forces you to really look at what’s there and invites you to try a book you might not have thought of before.  If you’re not up for these more bookish of adventures, you’ll just have to settle for the charming ambiance and the original idea, which are reason enough to pay the barge a visit, if you can find it.

While I’m on the subject of adventures, despite the frustration of a few failed attempts, I’m very glad to have found this bookshop today by accident.  It goes to show that you can search and search as long as you like for exactly what you want, trying to plan every detail of each day of your life, but in the end, life surprises you.  The plans you made might fall through and one day you might just be glad they did, because the things you never even imagined would happen will come to be the most important moments of your life.  I harp on a lot on this blog about how bookshops are worth saving because they privilege the act of searching over instantaneous finding.  But I think this bookshop doesn’t need to preach that lesson at you because it’s the living proof of it.  You might not find exactly what you’re looking for in such a tiny little bookshop,  but the experience is worth so much more than what you come out with.  To walk along the canal like you do every day and then to come across a boat you’ve never seen which has been styled a “book barge” moored at the side sounds like the beginning of a pirate novel and reminds me of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, in a way.  And I think we all need a little adventure in our lives.

For example.  I recently had to track down a copy of Home to India by Santha Rama Rau for a class I was taking.  There were no copies at Waterstone’s, Foyles, any of my usual local independents, my uni’s library or the University of London and the British Library’s copy was off-site.  I tried all of these places and finally found a copy at SOAS.  After weeks, I finally got my hands on a tiny, weathered red copy of the 1936 edition published by the Left Reading Club, an organisation which operated in the 30s and 40s, disseminating quality literature about leftist ideology among the British intelligentsia and which I had never even heard of before.  Everyone else in my class had ordered the reprinted version from Amazon instead of bothering to look for it.  So, sadly, none of them really got the sense that a text like this, by an Indian woman writing in the 30s about nationalist politics, was not exactly floating around freely.  The experience of tracking down that novel added something to my experience of reading it; its evident rarity really made its revolutionary aspect and its profound modernness (which of course becomes so relativised over time that it’s well-nigh invisible to recognise if you’re not looking for it) all the more real.

The point of that story, which somehow became a very long anecdote, is that oftentimes the adventures we have while looking for books add something special to our experience of them that wouldn’t be there otherwise.  And it’s the sense of discovery, adventure and the fanciful that Word on the Water is bringing back to the book-hunting experience.

On the barge with me today there was a little boy, probably about three years old, admiring a picture book about dinosaurs, which his parents were reading to him (bless them) even though they clearly needed to be on their way.  When they finally managed to get the book out of his hands, the little boy asked if he could drive the boat away.  His parents and another adult in the shop smiled and laughed, in that dismissive way adults do when they’re conspiring to ruin a child’s fun.  I found myself laughing too, but in my heart I thought this little boy is on to something.  For what a perfect fairytale ending would it be to motor off along the partly-frozen canal, into the Thames and out to sea, never to be seen again in a boat full of books?   It reminded me of the nights I feel asleep dreaming of drifting away in a shoe with Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod who ‘sailed off on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew.’

A most unusual barge floats on Regents Canal, which flows amid the office-littered landscape of King’s Cross. Step aboard the vessel, and you’ll find a trove of literary treasures waiting to be discovered.

Word on the Water, a 1920s Dutch barge, houses an assortment of cult, classic and contemporary fiction and nonfiction books, as well as a large array of children’s books. Its items fill the space both inside and outside the barge, so even those a bit wary of stepping off solid ground can still peruse parts of its collection.

The shop, which the brainchild of Paddy Screech, Jonathan Privett and Stephane Chaudat, has been open for nearly a decade. But it wasn’t always so easy to find. Previously, canal regulations meant the barge had to change location every couple of weeks, popping up wherever its owners could get a spot. After breaking the rules and squatting in one location for six months, the canal trust finally relented and gave the bookshop boat a permanent berth—thanks largely to public outcry and a successful campaign led by the shop’s many supporters.

In its spot along Regents Canal, the barge has become much more than a bookstore. In the winter, its woodburning stove is lit, offering bookworms of all ages a cozy refuge from the dreary cold. In the summer, the barge hosts a variety of performances, bringing anything from folk groups to jazz bands to poetry slams to its rooftop garden.

Word on the Water is a beloved feature of Granary Square, an area developed out of the old King’s Cross train sheds. The particular stretch of Regent’s Canal the barge sits on is home to a small portion of London’s large boating community, some irascible geese and swans, as well as a fine scattering of moorhens.

The bookshop moored at Kings Cross in 2018
Founded	2010
Founder	Paddy Screech, Jonathan Privett, and Stephane Chaudat
Website	www.wordonthewater.co.uk

Word on the Water is a bookshop situated on a barge that normally resides on Regent’s Canal in the King’s Cross area, London, although it can be found in other places along the London canal network.

History

The idea for the barge came in 2011 after two of the founders (Jon and Paddy) moored their houseboats next to each other. In 2014, the founders of Word on the Water applied for a permanent mooring licence from the England and Wales’ Canal & River Trust for Regent’s Canal in Paddington, however this was declined and instead given to British Land for the proposed creation of a coffee shop. A petition was then launched on the Canal & Rivers Trust to provide Word on the Water with a mooring licence which was granted in 2015. When they tried to buy the barge off Stephane he became their partner in the business. In 2021 it was ranked by The Guardian as one of Britain’s 10 best Indie bookshops.

The bookshop’s home is a Dutch canal boat dating from the 1920s.

Gallery

• 

  Inside of the Word on the Water’s canal boat. Books sprawl across dark wooden shelves.

• 

  Bookshop entrance sign

Coordinates: 51°32′07″N 0°07′25″E / 51.5354°N 0.1235°E

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The Harpeth River Writers is a collective of award winning authors from Tennessee, whose divergent talents include fiction, memoir, and poetry, spanning 18 published books. The collective consists of Sandy Ward Bell, Suzanne Webb Brunson, Catherine Riddle Caffey, John Neely Davis, Micki Fuhrman, Catherine Moore, Michael J. Tucker, Tom Wood, and Bill Woods.