Newham Bookshop logo (2015)

Open Tuesday to Saturday from
10 am to 5 pm.

We can send books by post, usually £3 in the UK.
Newham Bookshop logo (2015) The Wanstead Tap logo
Newham Bookshop events at The Wanstead Tap, Spring/Summer 2024
  • Thursday 18 April at 7.30 pm

    Sarah Wise
    The Undesirables

  • Thursday 25 April at 7.30 pm

    Andrew Whitehead
    A Devilish Kind Of Courage

  • Thursday 16 May at 7.30 pm

    Viv Groskop
    One Ukrainian Summer

  • Wednesday 29 May at 7.30 pm

    Iain Sinclair
    Pariah Genius

  • Wednesday 5 June at 7.30 pm

    Laura Laker
    Potholes and Pavements




Newham Bookshop by Pete Fallan
Newham Bookshop, Pete Fallan, March 2021.


Thursday 16 November at 7.30 pm
at Conway Hall


So They Call You Pisher!
So They Call You Pisher!
is published in hardback by Verso
at £16.99 on 11 September 2017.

Conway Hall
Buy tickets online

Tickets from Conway Hall £10,
concessions £7

Michael Rosen
Photograph of Michael Rosen
by Graham Turner for the Guardian

Michael Rosen
So They Call You Pisher!

A Memoir

Michael Rosen will be in conversation
with writer, editor and translator Daniel Hahn

“If you didn’t know whether to risk doing something, what’s the worst that could happen? ‘So they call you pisher!’ ”

In this humorous and moving memoir, Michael Rosen recalls the first twenty-three years of his life. Born in the north London suburbs, his parents, Harold and Connie, both teachers, first met as teenage communists in the 1930s Jewish East End. The family home was filled with stories of relatives in London, the United States and France and of those who had disappeared in Europe.

Unlike the children around them, Michael Rosen and his brother Brian grew up dreaming of a socialist revolution; party meetings were held in the front room, and summers were for communist camping holidays. It all changed after a trip to East Germany in 1957, when his parents decided to leave ‘the party’. Michael followed his own journey of radical self-discovery: running away to the Aldermaston march to ban the bomb, writing and performing in experimental political theatre, getting arrested during the 1968 movements.

“About a year before I was born, my brother died; he was not yet two. I don’t know the exact dates of his birth or the death. They were never marked or mentioned in our house or anywhere else. There was no memorial for him. There were no framed photos of him in our house. He was invisible. My arrival into the world must have been a mixture of delight and dread. Delight that I had come along to fill up the gap left by the one before. Dread that I could go too… I must have been the replacement child. Perhaps I was also a cough waiting to happen. Every snuffle, every slight rasp of a breath must have given them reason to worry.” – Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen is the author of over 140 books of poetry, stories and politics. He was the Children’s Laureate between 2007 and 2009 and is currently the Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has won numerous international awards for his work in literature. He presents Word of Mouth on BBC Radio 4.

“The lovely thing about Rosen’s writing is that it is rooted in the reality of his own post-war childhood – you can smell the matzo bray his father makes as a treat when his mother is out, hear the wheels squeak on his go-kart, sense the thrill of him and his ten-year-old friend Mart on holiday climbing the Sugar Loaf mountain and crossing from Wales into England with their trousers down.” – Guardian

“Throughout his career, Rosen has inspired children and adults to fall in love with reading.” – Independent

“In his writing, he puts on no airs; his literary background (English degree from Wadham, Oxford) has not held him up – or back. Sometimes his writing is so simple, you wonder at it: how did he resist the temptation to dress it up? He knows – in his work at least – when to stop.” – Kate Kellaway, Observer

Watch out for online events


Family lessons for
Writing and Reading Newham
available here

On the Record logo

Interested in learning more about Newham Bookshop and some of the people connected with it? We have four lessons for classroom or family use developed from On the Record’s oral history project centered around Newham Bookshop, Writing and Reading Newham. Click here for full details.


LoveReading logo

Newham Bookshop is LoveReading’s
Bookshop of the Month

We are proud that Newham Bookshop is LoveReading’s Bookshop of the Month. The article features a Q&A with Vivian Archer, which you can read here.


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