{"id":110898,"date":"2025-05-18T05:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T05:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110898\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T05:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T05:25:09","slug":"absolutely-stunning-birmingham-shop-with-celebrity-customers-named-best-of-its-kind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/110898\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Absolutely stunning&#8217; Birmingham shop with celebrity customers named best of its kind"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As well as selling new releases and old classics, The Heath is a &#8216;safe space&#8217; in the community<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2_AB_Bham20231117_bookshop_02JPG.jpg\" alt=\"women holding coffee cups in the shop\" loading=\"eager\"  \/>Catherine Gale and Claire Dawes of The Heath Bookshop<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">A Birmingham bookshop whose customers include comedian Joe Lycett has been named the very best in Britain at the British Book Awards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The Heath Bookshop on Kings Court in <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/all-about\/kings-heath-and-stirchley\" target=\"\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">Kings Heath<\/a> won the Independent Bookshop of the Year gong at the 35th annual awards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Bosses Catherine Gale and Claire Dawes were in attendance to collect the prize, shouting-out the Kings Heath community following the win.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \"><strong class=\"Strong_strong__e2x35\">Read more: <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/whats-on\/food-drink-news\/tried-birminghams-latest-restaurant-theyre-31621056\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"I tried Birmingham&#039;s latest restaurant and they&#039;re &#039;really showing off&#039; with \u00a35 dishLink opens in a new tab.\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">I tried Birmingham&#8217;s latest restaurant and they&#8217;re &#8216;really showing off&#8217; with \u00a35 dish<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \"><strong class=\"Strong_strong__e2x35\"><a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/data.reachplc.com\/230101373912847\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Subscribe to the Brum Food ClubLink opens in a new tab.\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">Subscribe to the Brum Food Club<\/a> for a weekly food and drink newsletter, in your inbox, every Thursday. It&#8217;s free.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The booksellers posted on Instagram: &#8220;What a night! We&#8217;re definitely still in shock after winning Independent Bookshop of the Year at The British Book Awards last night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;It was so special and we were delighted that our brilliant, bookseller Abi was there to share it with us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The pair thanked the judges and sponsors of the event before adding: &#8220;Most of all thanks to all the people who have bought books from us, been to an event, bought online through bookshop.org, bought a coffee or just come in for a chat. We can&#8217;t exist without you.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;Kings Heath is a vibrant, diverse, creative, and supportive community and we\u2019re so lucky to be a part of it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;We wanted to create a safe space for anybody and everybody and hoped people would see themselves reflected on our shelves and at the heart of everything we do. We never expected the support we&#8217;ve had!<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">&#8220;As Claire said last night, come to <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/\" target=\"\" aria-label=\"\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">Birmingham<\/a>, it&#8217;s not s**t! Catherine and Claire.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Claire and Catherine <a class=\"TextLink_text-link__dBSS0 TextLink_enabled__dJF3l\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birminghammail.co.uk\/whats-on\/shopping\/quit-rat-race-open-bookshop-28123252\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"shared the story of The Heath Bookshop with usLink opens in a new tab.\" tabindex=\"0\" rel=\"noopener\">shared the story of The Heath Bookshop with us<\/a> after they opened in 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">They spoke then of their author events, book clubs and coffee get-togethers and the programme of activities continues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">After sharing their good news, members of the community shared their support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Comedian and Kings Heath resident Joe Lycett wrote: &#8220;Wowee!&#8221; while Enjoy Kings Heath wrote: &#8220;Congratulations! Kings Heath is lucky to have you!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">Reviewers have given The Heath Bookshop a near-perfect 4.8 stars out of five on Google Reviews, with George Prince calling it &#8216;absolutely stunning&#8217; and Edward Palmer saying it was &#8216;one of our favourite places in Birmingham&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Paragraph_paragraph-text__PVKlh \">The Heath Bookshop is at Kings Court, 94 High St, Kings Heath, B14 7JZ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As well as selling new releases and old classics, The Heath is a &#8216;safe space&#8217; in the communityCatherine&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16821,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-110898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-kings-heath-and-stirchley","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114527176187806530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}