Tom Fort

A celebration of the quintessential cornerstone of any village in Britain – the shop – in this case a century-old hardware shop in a beautiful Berkshire village.

Fort’s family’s dream of developing the shop into one that would become the centre of village life did come true, but for a very different set of circumstances than expected. Rivets, Trivets and Galvanised Buckets interweaves the evolution of the shop, its previous owners, and the history of the items it sells to present a delightful study of community and the eccentricities of ordinary people. It is The Repair Shop meets The Diary of a Bookseller all conveyed in Tom Fort’s signature easy-going writing style.

Tom Fort was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1978 he joined the BBC in London where he worked in the BBC Radio newsroom for 22 years. He lives in South Oxfordshire with his wife and two of his children. Two of his books have been selected for BBC R4’s ‘Book of the Week.’