As an ode to recently deceased British actress Pauline Collins, the Mayflower Theatre Company plays Shirley Valentine’s Sunday Dinner, a short monologue from the play Shirley Valentine by Willy Russell (and from the film by the same title, starring Pauline Collins as Shirley). British housewife Shirley Valentine, alone with a bottle of wine on Sunday […]
Book launch and Live podcast recording - in English On January 5, Mayflower Bookshop will host a book launch and live podcast event for Inger Kuin’s Diogenes: The Rebellious Life and Revolutionary Philosophy of the Original Cynic (Basic Books, 2025). The book is about the life and thought of Diogenes the Cynic, an iconoclastic philosopher […]
On Saturday, January 24, Mayflower Bookshop participates in the Leiden Blues and Jazz Week with the Daan Schreuder Trio. Daan Schreuder is a promising young jazz pianist from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. With his trio, he brings fresh energy, rich improvisation, and strong musical interaction to the stage. 15:30-17:30, free entrance.
Our January Book of the Month is the award-winning Japanese bestseller Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton. Inspired by a real-life case, the novel follows Rika Machida, a Tokyo journalist who begins a correspondence with Manako Kajii, a woman in detention whose story has gripped the public imagination. What starts as a professional […]
Fernanda Moura Workshop in English
GREAT CRIME – 1: The murders in the bookcase: a review by Leo van Zanen This year, Mayflower Bookshop presents a literary lecture series on GREAT CRIME, starting with a literature review by Leo van Zanen as an introduction to this series on Sunday February 22, 2026. Van Zanen will give an overview of the […]
Mayflower Book Club reads Prophet Song by Paul Lynch Open bookcub, sessions in English
Open book club, sessions in English. PLEASE NOTE: This session will be on TUESDAY instead of wednesday.
GREAT CRIME – 2: Lawyers as Rebels or Collaborators: The Case of To Kill a Mockingbird The second lecture in Mayflower Bookshop’s Great Crime series will be given by Tony Foster of the Department of English at Leiden University. Please note that this lecture will be in English. His talk, titled “Lawyers as Rebels or […]
Our April Book of the Month is the New York Times bestseller The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali. This novel is set in Tehran, Iran, and spans three decades, starting in the 1950s. It follows Ellie, whose family falls from riches, and her kind, brave friend Homa. The book follows the two girls […]
On Thursday May 7, join us at Mayflower Bookshop for an evening of poetry by students and alumni of the LAK Poetry Workshop at Leiden University. The aim of the evening is to share poetry, provide a platform for poets to try out new material, and give everyone interested an opportunity to gather and meet […]