While I was back in London I went to a book signing at a small independent bookshop in Portobello Road. It was a special treat because the author was my old friend and German theatre pal from university, Tamara Von Werthern, who I’ve not seen in more than ten years. In fact the last time I saw her was on one of my Christopher Wren sketchcrawls in the City (the one in 2014), when she came along to sketch with her husband (also an artist) and young children. She’s a playwright with many published and performed works and in recent years has also become a detective novelist, writing a series of books in German based on her father Philipp; ‘Ich Glaub, Es Hackt’, ‘Ach Du Liebe Zeit!’ and the newest one, ‘Adel Auf Dem Radel’. These have even been included on the curriculum of the German department at our old school, Queen Mary, and she has been invited back to talk about them. The first two books have been translated into English, as ‘Only The Lonely’ and the most recently published book, ‘Silent Night’. It was this book that was being signed, and Tamara has done a series of book talks recently accompanied by her father visiting from Germany. I’ve seen Tamara post about her books for a few years now since the first one came out in Germany, but as I’ve not been able to get hold of any I hadn’t read them. So at the bookshop I took the chance to buy the first two in both languages (I will save buying the third German one for another time). I drew them (above) when I got back to America, and so far I’ve read the first one ‘Only The Lonely’ which was really fun with an interesting twist, well not a twist but a surprise I didn’t see coming. I am going to try to read the German original next; I am so out of practice with my German, it’s twenty years since I last visited!) but I’m looking forward to reading Silent Night. I kind of wish I’d read it over Christmas, but I’m a very slow reader.

Jam Bookshop was small but really well stocked in some great titles, and very much an artist-friendly shop. I did also buy a beautiful novelization of My Neighbour Totoro for my son (we both love the Ghibli films), as well as a zine about Rediscovering Colombo (apparently this was a thing during the pandemic; I did not know, but I had myself started watching them online too just recently. I’m getting into detective stories, reading a bunch of Agatha Christie books lately). I also got a couple of drawings on notecards (one of Totoro, one of Columbo) which were drawn by the shop’s owner. I didn’t realize he was the artist, David Ziggy Greene, until he offered to sign the back of them for me (though he signed mine to ‘Paul’), and he is a cartoonist for the magazine Private Eye which was very cool. Anyway of course I wanted to sketch Tamara actually doing the book signing near the front of the store, and she signed all four of my books, as well as signing the sketches I did. It was great to catch up with her after all these years; I had just run my first 10k the week before and she shared with me her own running stories. I sketched fast, preferring my second one (below), while people came in and spoke with her and bought her books. Very cool indeed.

When it was time for me to move along and get sketching the rest of Portobello Road (and meet several other artists along the way, as it turned out), I did stop for a little while outside the shop and started drawing the exterior, which is actually inside an indoor section besides the market. I was thinking, I mist take my son here if we come back to this part of London, I think he’d like it (though maybe not the crowds of the market). Unfortunately, I saw their posts last week that the shop has closed. Being in that inside passageway did not bring a lot of foot traffic, and it’s such a hard time for bookshops these days (I used to work for an independent one in Finchley that is now long gone). I’m sorry to see it go but am glad I was able to visit and draw it while it was there. Tamara said they had been very good with supporting artists and local authors, and had moved form another location in east London.

Anyway, despite that news, I’m glad to have been able to go to Tamara’s signing and hope that her books do really well, and I am looking forward to reading the rest. Finally – a fun fact, Tamara is the only person I have ever allowed to draw in my Moleskine sketchbooks. It wasn’t on this trip, it wasn’t even on that sketchcrawl, in fact it was on an evening out with friends in London in late 2009 at the Ship pub in Soho, when I had my purple pen and was not very comfortable drawing people, so she drew us instead.