Tim Waterstone – Folkestone Festival

Tim Waterstone is one of Britain’s most successful businessmen, having built the Waterstones empire that started with one shop in 1982. In his memoir ‘The Face Pressed Against a Window’ he explores his formative years in a small town in rural England at the end of the Second World War, and the troubled relationship he had with his father before moving on to the epiphany he had while studying at Cambridge, which set him on the road to Waterstones and gave birth to the creative strategy that made him a high street name. In 2018 he was knighted for services to bookselling and charity.

In conversation he discusses the years leading up to the creation of Waterstones and gives his thoughts on the future of books and bookselling.