Thanet’s newest hotel destination is “a love letter to books, reading and writing,” says founder Tamara Macfarlane. The Book Hotel in Ramsgate is a literature-themed boutique getaway, taking over The Falstaff on Addington Street - across the road from where she previously ran children's book shop Moon Lane.
Entering through a new book shop, visitors can stay in one of ten rooms, each sponsored by a different publisher with a specially curated shelf of books. The beautiful first floor function room will also hold literary events, beginning with the Ramsgate Lit Fest, which will officially launch the venue.
Taking place over nine days at the end of May, the festival’s programme is filled with events for adults and children. Among them, Adam Weymouth will discuss his journey tracking a wolf across the Alps, Roisie Wilby explores the science of heartbreak, and illustrators Garry Parsons and Adam Stower will get children drawing their characters.
As the final touches are put on the new endeavour, Tamara tells us about the idea behind The Book Hotel, programming Ramsgate Lit Fest, and why she believes people’s desire to read is stronger than ever.
What's the idea behind The Book Hotel?
The Book Hotel is a love letter to books, reading and writing. I had Moon Lane Children’s Books on Addington Street and fell in love with the wonderful building, team and atmosphere at The Falstaff while I was there. I kept thinking about my dream holiday and decided that it would combine the warmth and delicious food and coffee of The Falstaff, with the incredible light that Ramsgate has, sea walks, beach swims, and piles of brilliant books.
How did you come to partner with The Falstaff?
The idea has been quietly brewing for years. The owner of The Falstaff, Peter Andon, remembered us talking about it in 2022 and asked if I was still interested. Peter and I met, we talked, we realised that we wanted the same thing: somewhere warm, hospitable, properly Ramsgate, and not at all stiff. They had the rooms, the bar, the kitchen and the soul of an old coaching inn. We had the books, the events and a slightly evangelical view of what a bookshop can be. Putting the two together felt obvious.
How are the rooms set up?
There are eight individually designed guest rooms and two apartments, each one made for the kind of weekend where you can read in bed without guilt. We didn’t want the hotel to feel themed in a big way so instead, publishers are starting to sponsor each of the bedrooms putting in a curated selection of their books and prints of their book covers and illustrations. This will mean that each room has its own unique feel, showcasing an interesting range of small and large publishers. The first three of these rooms will be ready by the end of June.
What has the response been like?
Wildly generous. Ramsgate is a town that goes out of its way to support local initiatives. The welcome has been extraordinary. People have wandered in, asked questions, offered recommendations, brought friends, suggested authors. The brilliant independents along Addington Street, the wider Thanet community; everyone, has cheered us on. We sold over a third of our opening stock the first weekend due to the colossal local support that we had. We have been bowled over by local kindness and enthusiasm.
You're officially launching with the first Ramsgate Lit Fest. How has it been putting that together?
Putting a festival together is a bit like throwing a very ambitious dinner party, except the guests are authors, the courses are events, and the table is the whole of The Falstaff. It has been joyful, exhausting, surprising, and occasionally a touch chaotic, which I think is the correct ratio.
Authors have said yes with such warmth, the local community has leapt in to volunteer help in all directions, and the programme has come together in a way that feels right for Ramsgate, interesting, eclectic, and welcoming to everyone. The Waterloo Room, The Falstaff’s event space means that we can return to some of the intimacy of earlier literary festivals; a chance to really feel as though you have spent time with the authors, not just glimpsed them.
Which events are you most looking forward to?
It would be impossible to choose, and the honest answer is all of them. But, with a glass in hand to celebrate the festival and The Book Hotel launching at The Falstaff, there are a few I cannot wait for. Mlle. Loulou opens the festival with French chanson and jazz; it is going to be a lovely way to launch. Fern Riddell’s children’s book celebrating women who changed history. Adam Weymouth's Lone Wolf is one of the books of the year, and his quiet, urgent way of telling stories about Europe will be unforgettable. We have also had a really exciting last minute addition to the programme when Rosa Rankin Gee dropped in today with news of her new book publishing next week My Only Boy.
If I am allowed a sneaky extra: I am also very excited to host my own session of The Book of Mysteries, Magic and the Unexplained for the half term crowd, because few audiences are more fun to talk to about ghosts and cryptids than seven to eleven year-olds.
We're often told that reading for pleasure is becoming a less common pastime. Do you find it more difficult to engage both adults and children with books?
Genuinely, no. The data sometimes makes for gloomy headlines, but the daily experience inside an independent bookshop tells a different story. Children walk in and light up; they find comfy space, they read aloud to their grown-ups, they remember the names of authors with extraordinary precision. Adults pick up a book and visibly soften.
What people often need is permission and space, somewhere to slow down, somewhere to be reminded that reading is a pleasure, not a homework assignment. Give them that, and they leave with three books, a coffee, and a slightly better mood than they walked in with. So no, the appetite is there. We just need more places that take reading seriously and treat it joyfully.
Is it the desire to read, or the demand on people's time, that has changed, do you think?
It is overwhelmingly the demand on time, and the constant pull of the screen. The desire is intact; in fact I think it is sharper than ever, because so much of modern life is rushed and noisy that the quiet, immersive pleasure of a good book has become a small act of rebellion.
What has shifted is the room around the desire. Phones colonise the in-between minutes that used to belong to reading: the bus journey, the wait for a kettle, the ten minutes before bed. A bookshop, a café with a comfortable chair, a hotel room with a tempting stack on the bedside table; these are all gentle ways of giving people their reading time back. That is one of the things The Book Hotel is for.
What books have you read and loved recently?
I am revisiting Tove Jansson with my whole heart at the moment. I am reading her autobiography told in short stories, which is so brilliantly written that the pieces haunt your thoughts for days afterwards in the best possible way. I keep picking the book up to admire a sentence and then losing another 20 minutes.
I am also particularly loving books in translation just now. The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino is a beautifully chilly Japanese detective novel that I tore through in a sitting. The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai is a complete delight, gentle, hungry-making, full of emotional food memories. And I have just finished Gotcha Gotcha, which is wonderfully strange and warm. There is something about Japanese fiction at the moment that feels exactly right for the rhythm of life I am trying to build at The Book Hotel: small, attentive, a bit melancholy, often funny, almost always about the quiet pleasure of paying attention.
You can find The Book Hotel at 16-19 Addington Street, Ramsgate, CT11 9JJ. Ramsgate Lit Fest takes place from May 23-30. Find out more.
