Shakespeare and Company, Paris

Imtiaz Dharker, winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, selected the iconic Parisian bookshop, Shakespeare and Company as her Ex Libris venue.

In this episode, released to coincide with the store’s centenary, Imtiaz and Ben are joined by the famed shop’s proprietor, Sylvia Whitman. They sit and chat on one of the tumbleweed beds that are made available in the shop’s library to aspiring writers. We are transported in this conversation not just to Kilometre Zero of Paris, on which faultline the shop resides, but also to a hinterland of imagination and wonder, thanks to Imtiaz’s poetry and the rich 100-year old history of Sylvia’s home.

Imtiaz has published seven collections of poetry. Carol Ann Duffy wrote of them: ‘Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.’