Our Story

He was sitting on a bench, inertly watching the devastation wrought by Bendicò in the flowerbeds; every now and again the dog would turn innocent eyes towards him as if asking for praise at labour done: fourteen carnations broken off, half a hedge torn apart, an irrigation channel blocked. How human!

“Good Bendicò, come here.” And the animal hurried up and put its earthly nostrils into his hand, anxious to show it had forgiven this silly interruption of a fine job of work.

The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

 

The Silk Roads

It all started one night in Harwich, staring out at the North Sea which I was about to cross on my way first to Rotterdam, and then onwards through Central Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, across the Caspian Sea and into Central Asia. I took ferries, buses, trains, cargo ships and hitch-hiked my way to Eurasia, ending up in Kyrgyzstan where I spent a couple of years teaching in Bishkek, the country’s capital.

Learning Russian

I made slow progress in my attempts to learn Russian over my time living in Kyrgyzstan and returned home to the UK with a desire to keep up the study of foreign languages. I initially wanted to start a language school, having informal conversation classes in small groups rather than learning in a boring classroom environment. The languages taught would be French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish, four of which I’ve tried to learn at some point in my life, all with limited success.

Bendico's Vision

The idea expanded beyond just learning foreign languages to exploring the cultures that surround these languages. The concept was born; Bendico will curate a selection of books around the countries that speak these five languages. You will find a few books that will help you learn these languages, but beyond that we offer a rich collection of translated literature and English-language novels set in these places, alongside non-fiction books about the history and culture of these countries.

Our plan for the near future is to find a suitable home for Bendico, setting up a space in either Bristol or London. It will be a bookshop cafe by day, with the evenings dedicated to language learning, film screenings and talks with our favourite authors and translators. Sign up to our newsletter to follow Bendico’s journey!