Give A Book

Give A Book Give a Book is a charity dedicated to promoting books and the pleasure of reading in the hardest places. Silver winners at the Smiley Charity Film Awards 2025.

Our main work is in prisons, schools and with disadvantaged children. We give books to people who really need them. Give a Book mainly works in prisons and primary schools, and anywhere we can help spread the pleasure of reading. For more information please go to our website. We also have a Book of the Month every month chosen by special guests. "...I could escape for as long as I was reading..." Simon Gray, Coda

Books for First Nighters provides books for those spending their first night in custody. The project aims to offer some ...
03/08/2026

Books for First Nighters provides books for those spending their first night in custody. The project aims to offer some comfort and mental release to new prisoners.

One prisoner described it as 'a moment of comfort in a time of crisis.’

It's just one of the projects that we run in HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire. Thank you to IS Oxford Ltd. The employee-owned company donates £250 to a charity every month, and we are July's very grateful recipients. The money will help support all our activities at HMP Bullingdon, including Books for First Nighters, Prison Reading Groups, and book rooms on the wing.

Heritage Cirqa Library Software, Ministry of Justice UK

22/07/2026

Looking back to our Store Day earlier this month, and huge thank-yous are in order to the volunteers from , and .

They helped us pack up mountains of boxes of fun, uplifting and thrilling books for our projects.

A shout-out to for providing super-readable, dyslexia-friendly books, and to the other publishers, including , , and for all your contributions, too.

Thank you so very much. These books are going to where books are needed the most.

Raising Readers is a project for prisoners and their children. A parent in prison chooses a book to send home to their c...
21/07/2026

Raising Readers is a project for prisoners and their children. A parent in prison chooses a book to send home to their child, writing a message for them on the bookplate inside. Both the parent and the child receive a copy of the book, so they can read together during a visit or over the phone.

Not only does Raising Readers involve parents in their child's reading journey, but it also gives them something to talk about, strengthening family bonds.

Here are the books we sent out to 54 prisons in June. Thank you to Pan Macmillan for their generous support.

Find out more about Raising Readers: https://giveabook.org.uk/project/raising-readers



Macmillan Children's Books Hamza Yassin Photography

We are thrilled that William Boyd, who won The Pleasure of Reading Prize 2026, has also selected our Book of the Month. ...
14/07/2026

We are thrilled that William Boyd, who won The Pleasure of Reading Prize 2026, has also selected our Book of the Month. William has chosen Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. Find out why: https://giveabook.org.uk/book/william-boyd-pale-fire/

Every Book of the Month is sent to our projects. We include a bookplate to explain why it was chosen.

Buy Pale Fire on our page on Bookshop. org and we’ll receive 10% of the proceeds to support our work: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/giveabook

We are delighted to announce that William Boyd has won the 2026 The Pleasure of Reading Prize 🎉 As a reading-for-pleasur...
10/07/2026

We are delighted to announce that William Boyd has won the 2026 The Pleasure of Reading Prize 🎉

As a reading-for-pleasure charity, the Prize combines our commitment to authors with our charitable mission: the £10,000 prize money is split between the winner and a Give a Book project of their choice.

On being chosen as this year's recipient, William Boyd said, "I'm both delighted and honoured to have won the Pleasure for Reading Prize in 2026. It is wonderful to be in the company of such distinguished previous winners. Probably the best prize any serious author can win!"

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing UK for sponsoring the Prize and to the Blavatnik Family Foundation for their generous support.

We are very grateful for Penguin Books' support of our work. They attended our recent Reading in Prison Day, which broug...
08/07/2026

We are very grateful for Penguin Books' support of our work.

They attended our recent Reading in Prison Day, which brought together many people doing fantastic work to promote books and reading in prisons. Here are their five takeaways from the day ⬇️

We work closely with fellow charities to get books to where they are needed most.We’re pleased to support Women In Priso...
02/07/2026

We work closely with fellow charities to get books to where they are needed most.

We’re pleased to support Women In Prison with books for their drop-in hubs for women and children.

What an achievement 🎉 Mark Roberts, from the education department at HMP Hindley, took on the Yorkshire Three Peaks Chal...
24/06/2026

What an achievement 🎉

Mark Roberts, from the education department at HMP Hindley, took on the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge yesterday - 24 miles and a total climb of 5,200ft, within 12 hours, in a heatwave ☀️

Mark was fundraising for our Raising Readers project. Parents in prison choose a book to send home to their child, adding a personal message on a bookplate. We give both the parent and child copies of the book, so they can read together over the phone or during a visit.

Mark chose Raising Readers because he's seen the difference it makes. He said, 'It matters because kids with a parent in prison are 3x more likely to end up there themselves. Reading together cuts that risk and keeps families connected.'

You can still support Mark's fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/yorkshire-3-peaks-for-raising-readers

Thank you so much, Mark. You are amazing! Here are his brilliant photos. (He's in the grey t-shirt). Other HMP Hindley staff took part too. Very well done, everyone!

Ministry of Justice UK

Belated but extremely heartfelt congratulations to Neil Barclay, Civilian Librarian at HMP Thameside. Neil was awarded t...
23/06/2026

Belated but extremely heartfelt congratulations to Neil Barclay, Civilian Librarian at HMP Thameside. Neil was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the 2026 King's Birthday Honours for his services to prisoner rehabilitation.

Prison Reading Groups, part of Give a Book, has been working with Neil at HMP Thameside since 2013. We’ve been delighted to support Neil’s excellent and varied projects. Our volunteers have run reading groups since 2014, hosting many of the authors that Neil has brought in, including Ruby Wax, David Nicholls, Adam Kay - writer / comedian and Paula Hawkins.

We’re delighted that Neil has received this recognition. He is a brilliant librarian and it’s a pleasure to work with him.

The photo was taken at our Reading in Prison Day event on 12 June.
Photo credit Andy Aitchison Photographer

It's Independent Bookshop Week, so we're giving a massive shout-out to Daunt Books. They have been our partner for over ...
19/06/2026

It's Independent Bookshop Week, so we're giving a massive shout-out to Daunt Books. They have been our partner for over 10 years, since we started Give a Book.

Thank you Daunt Books for all your support. The photo is of our local shop in Holland Park.

Kit de Waal, Writer is one of our ambassadors and is also an ambassador for Independent Bookshop Week.

Kit beautifully captures the joy of shopping at an independent bookshop, 'Above all, independent bookshops quietly protect the simple joy of reading for pleasure: the browsing, the discovery, the feeling of walking out with a story you didn’t know you needed until someone who loves books put it in your path.' 💛

Books Are My Bag

Address

112-114 Holland ParkAvenue
London
W114UA

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 4pm
Tuesday 9am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9am - 5:30pm
Thursday 9am - 5:30pm
Friday 9am - 5:30pm
Saturday 9am - 5:30pm
Sunday 9am - 6pm

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