Our Story
The Silk Roads
It all began one night crossing the North Sea, on a boat from Harwich to Rotterdam and then onwards overland all the way to Central Asia. Via ferries, buses, trains and cargo ships, I made my way to Kyrgyzstan, where I ended up spending a couple of years teaching in the capital city of Bishkek.
Whilst living in Kyrgyzstan, I started learning Russian. Even after two years my level never really got much beyond survival Russian and I really wanted to continue practicing when I got back home to the UK. Instead of lessons in a classroom, I was looking for a relaxed, social setting to speak my broken Russian.
Bookshop Meets Language School
I've always loved reading and bookshops are my favourite places in the world, a true sanctuary where I can spend hours browsing titles and talking to the booksellers. Whilst living in Central Asia, I read countless books about the Russian-speaking world; classics like Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich or the novel Jamilia by the Kyrgyz author Chyngyz Aitmatov opened my eyes to the power of translated literature, with non-fiction books like Martin Amis' Koba the Dread and Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game bringing the history of this region to life.
I had the idea one day of combining my language school with a bookshop. What if people could come into the space in the evenings and have conversation classes surrounded by all our books? With this, Bendico was born.
I wanted to move beyond just Russian and incorporate five languages in total. Japanese is the most popular translated literature in the UK and I was sold after I loved Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. For the other three, I wanted languages that had a rich literary tradition and were also popular for people to try and learn so I brought in French, Italian and Spanish.
Bendico x Arthur's Coffee House
There was only one slight problem; how was I going to make this dream a reality? I wanted to do it back in my hometown of London, preferably where I grew up in West London. I spent almost a year building up the business, braving wet and windy days at a market in Richmond throughout the winter months, until I found my dream space.
As soon as I came across Arthur's Coffee House in Ravenscourt Park, I knew this was the perfect fit. Bendico is named after the Great Dane in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's classic novel The Leopard, whilst Arthur's is named after the owner Max's blue roan cocker spaniel, the breed of dog I grew up with. Beyond just both being named after dogs, the cafe has the exact homely atmosphere I was looking for.
A curated selection of our books is now on sale at Arthur's, with our conversation classes for French, Italian and Spanish taking place on Wednesday evenings. Our online shop has the full range of books, organised into collections of five books around different themes and topics. We also have our book club which explores the world of translated literature and meets on the last Tuesday of every month.
Hope to see you at Arthur's Coffee House soon. To stay in touch, join our WhatsApp community and sign up to our newsletter in the footer of our website.
Tim, founder