There is a particular kind of moment that only books create.
It isn’t a grand revelation, nor a sudden insight, but rather a gentle realisation. The feeling that something you cherish might not just be a hobby, but a way of navigating the world.
For me, that moment came through a book. Or rather, through two books.
Many years ago, while training for the priesthood at Campion House in Isleworth, I met Daniel, the person I would later establish Goldsboro Books with, because we were both reading novels by Jeffrey Archer. I was engrossed in Kane and Abel.
Daniel was reading As the Crow Flies.
That was it.
No grand declaration.
Just acknowledgement.
Two people in the same place, at the same time, quietly obsessed with stories.
Jeffrey Archer is, above all, a storyteller. Regardless of what you think about literary trends or critical hierarchies, he grasps something fundamental about narrative: momentum, character, ambition, and consequence. His novels revolve around lives in progress, how choices accumulate, how success is built or lost, and how time reshapes people.
As the Crow Flies is, in many ways, a novel about building a business empire.
Kane and Abel explores rivalry, legacy, and the lasting impact of beginnings.
At the time, I was not analysing them. I was simply absorbed. But in hindsight, it seems inevitable that those stories ended up where they did.
Because books do not merely entertain us. They grant us permission. They enable us to imagine futures we have yet to articulate. They introduce us to versions of ourselves we have not yet named. They demonstrate that obsession, when carefully nurtured, can become a vocation.
Daniel and I did not set out to start a business because of novels. But our friendship, and eventually Goldsboro Books, grew from the same place those books came from.
A belief in stories as things worth building a life around.
That belief has always stayed with me. Over the years, I have observed people start conversations in bookshops simply because they are holding the same book. I have seen readers return years later to share that a particular novel changed their perspective on something important. I have also seen authors realise, sometimes for the first time, that their words have left a lasting impression in someone else’s life.
This is the quiet power of books.
Not the bestseller lists.
Not the noise.
But the slow, steady accumulation of meaning.
The fact that Jeffrey Archer has now announced he is writing his final novel, Adam and Eve, feels strangely appropriate. Storytellers reach a point where they put down their tools, but their work continues to spread outward. Into friendships. Into careers. Into lives that look nothing like the ones imagined when the first page was turned.
When people ask how Goldsboro Books started, the practical answer involves dates, places, and decisions. The more honest answer goes further back. It begins with moments like those in Isleworth, when two future booksellers recognise each other through a shared love of story.
I did not realise it then, but that moment showed me this could be a life.
A life shaped by books.
By curiosity.
By the belief that stories matter.
Books change lives.
Which book changed yours?
3 comments
Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the great anti-war novels. I read it while hitch hiking around Nixon’s America in the 1970s. A mixture of science fiction, historical fiction, satire and autobiography, it left a deep impression on me and planted the creative writing bug in my mind.
Your reflections on books life and Jeffrey are both insightful and sensitive; a difficult combination to achieve. Well done.
I first read Kane and Abel and was hooked. I then went on to read the prodigal daughter which I loved.
I have read every novel written by Jeffrey since but my favourite has to be paths of glory,