Collected

Emma Hamlett, a Durham local and former museum curator, started selling books from a van called Cordelia in May 2022 and parked the idea permanently on the Riverwalk soon after — a bookshop specialising in writing by women, with a community programme that buys books for a local comprehensive built into the till. The growth has been the quiet kind that leases tell better than press releases: the shop recently signed nine years on the unit below to nearly double its floor. Durham's colleges have libraries; the city, thanks to one curator's swerve, has a bookshop with a thesis.