This episode is a pause.

A look back at the books and conversations that shaped 2025.
A look ahead to a bold, uncomfortable, exciting year in reading.

And a reminder that five minutes a day is enough.

Without books, the world gets smaller. With them, it stays human.

I’ll be back in the spring.
Until then — GO ALL IN.

What if the magic of books was literally lethal? In this episode of Confessions of a Book Collector, David Headley sits down with Sunday Times bestselling author Georgia Summers to talk deadly ink magic and magical bookshops. We explore her latest novel The Bookshop Below, a story where book thievery, secret societies and rival booksellers collide, and where owning the wrong shop can get you killed.

Georgia also reflects on her journey through every layer of the book world, bookseller, librarian, editor, publisher, and now bestselling novelist, and why the magic of bookshops has never worn off.

David Headley sits down with Philippa Gregory, the undisputed queen of historical fiction, to discuss The Berlin Traitor and the woman history loves to hate: Jane Boleyn.

Drawing on new scholarship and decades of obsession, she reframes Jane not as a salacious villain, but as a brilliant survivor navigating the lethal politics of Henry VIII’s court.

Philippa reflects on revisionist history, feminism, and why women in the past have been flattened into stereotypes by male historians. She reveals the extraordinary moment that reshaped her novel and explores how early reading and libraries shaped her own life from childhood.