SPECIALIST BOOKSHOPS, DISAPPEARED & VIRTUAL

See Also: BOOKSHOPS; BOOKSHOPS, DISAPPEARED

The Albanian Bookshop

The principal item sold in The Albanian Shop was the collected works of Enver Hoxha (1908-1985).¹

Location: 3 Betterton Street, WC2H 9BH (blue, yellow)

See Also: THE HARD LEFT

¹. British-made movies that starred the comic entertainer Norman Wisdom (1915-2010) were the only Western films that were screened uncut in Enver Hoxha's Albania.

Location: 91 Fernhead Road, W9 3EA. Wisdom s birthplace.

The Ian Allan Bookshop

As a schoolboy Ian Allan (1922-2015) had been shot in one of his legs and had had to have it amputated. Therefore, he was not called up for military service during the Second World War. He worked at Waterloo Railway Station as a Grade 5 clerk in the public relations department of Southern Railways. As such, he had to deal with numerous requests from train enthusiasts that asked for train inventories. He proposed to the company that it should issue a booklet that listed all of the engines of the company. Oliver Bulleid, Southern Railways's Chief Mechanical Engineer, looked on the idea askance, however, Robert Holland-Martin, the Chairman, was open to it. It declined to do so but agreed that he could publish it at his own financial risk. The A.B.C. of Southern Railway Locomotives (1942). In 1945 Allan left Southern Railways and became a full-time publisher.

Mr Allan's two favourite train numbers were 904 and 913, which were borne by Southern Railways's Christ's Hospital and St Paul's.

The Ian Allan Bookshop closed in 2020.

Location: 45-46 Lower Marsh, SE1 7RG

282 Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1V 1BB. Ian Allan's original premises. (orange, grey)

See Also: RAILWAYS; TRANSPORT

Website: www.ianallan.com

The Alternative Bookshop

The Libertarian campaigner Christopher Tame founded the Libertarian Alliance as a discussion group. Subsequently, it became a formal organisation. In 1979 he opened The Alternative Bookshop in Floral Street, Covent Garden, to sell Libertarian, Anarchist, and classical liberal literature. Authors who held signing sessions on its premises included Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Despite its championing capitalism, the shop never made a profit and had to be subsidised by benefactors. In 1986 it closed.

Location: 40 Floral Street, WC2E 9DG (orange, red)

See Also: ANARCHISM The Freedom Press; FLAWED REASONING & COMMERCE

The Bloomsbury Bookshop

The Bloomsbury Bookshop was a very small bookshop that specialised in jazz and the Bloomsbury Group. Upon one occasion Graham Greene visited it. At the request of John Chilton, one of the proprietors, the novelist inscribed and signed a copy of Our Man In Havana (1958). Subsequently, the bookseller-musician noticed that The Human Factor (1978) contained a character called Chilton.

Location: 31-35 Great Ormond Street, WC1N 3HZ (orange, turquoise)

Centerprise

The Centerprise community bookshop welcomed the poor, the gay, and the radical. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Keynes (1927-2017), a great-grandson of Charles Darwin. For the previous twenty years he had worked as a merchant banker and had become tired of it. The shop survived for forty years.

Location: 136-138 Kingsland High Street, E8 2NS

Helter Skeleter

Helter Skelter was a book shop that specialised in popular music. The business was founded by Sean Body (1916-2008), Michael Cohen, and Hilary Cranny. Its premises were on the southern side of Denmark Street. The site had been once occupied by Regent Sound. In 1963 the Rolling Stones had recorded I Wanna Be Your Man and Come On there.

Helter Skelter established a publishing imprint. A rent rise prompted the closure of the shop in 2004. The imprint survived.

Location: 4 Denmark Street WC2H 8LP (blue, grey)

See Also: POP & ROCK

Website: www.helterskelterpublishing.com

Murder One

Murder One was a 'Crime & Mystery Bookshop' that sold other types of works in other genres.

Location: 76-78 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0AA

See Also: DETECTIVE FICTION

Website: wwwmurderone.co.uk

The Persephone Bookshop

Persephone Books is a publishing house that specialises in reprinting 20^thC novels, journals, cookery books, and short stories. The business was founded in 1998 by Nichola Beauman. It established a relationship with Pan Macmillan. Persephone Books opened a shop in an early 18^thC building on the west side of Lamb's Conduit Street. In 2008 a second Persephone Bookshop was opened on Kensington Church Street.

In 2021 Persephone announced that it was closing its London shops and opening a new one in Bath.

Location: 59 Lamb's Conduit Street, WC1N 3NB

109 Kensington Church Street, W8 7LN

Website: www.persephonebooks.co.uk

St George's Gallery

St George's Gallery was an art book shop business. It was purchased in 1944 by Otto Brill. Prior to going into exile, he had been a member of a wealthy Viennese family that had collected art. The business did not flourish under his guidance. In 1950 he gave it to his daughter Agatha (1924-2016). She did not have a formal training in art history but proved to be highly adept at picking the brains of her customers. Under her and her husband Charles Sadler (d.2003), the business developed a role within London's worlds of art scholarship and art sales. In 1964 it moved to premises in Duke Street St James's.

The Sadlers closed the business in 1989.

Sports Pages

John Gaustad (1948-2016) was a New Zealander who arrived in Britain in 1974. He took a job with Dillons. After the Home Office had conferred residency upon him, he felt able to open a bookshop of his own. He appreciated that the business was moving towards chains at the expense of individual bookshops. He believed that the way that he could establish his own bookshop would be make sure it served a specialty. Therefore, he engaged in a research exercise. He had always been an ardent sports fan, his breakthrough came when he realised that in London he could not buy a book off the shelf about All Blacks (New Zealand's national rugby team). He appreciated that many booksellers were profoundly disdainful towards sport and those bookshops that did have one usually only stock a few bland titles, a fair proportion of which were ghost written. Gaustad's view was that sports books had the potential to be as good as any other books. He was to retain a literary objectivity towards sports biographies and did not stock works about blood sports.

In 1985 Gaustad opened the Sportspages bookshop. It was in Caxton Walk, which was located just north of the junction Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. The shop was devoted to books on sport in a way that no over bookshop in Britain had been before. The first book that it sold was about yoga. The shop was once described in The Guardian newspaper as part-conventional bookshop, part-social club, part-shrine .

Gaustad and Graham Sharpe of the betting shop chain William Hill set up the William Hill Sports Book Award. The inaugural competition was held in 1989. It was won by Daniel Topolski's True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny.

For people from overseas Sportspages became a reason to visit London as part to trip to Europe and for North Europeans who followed a British soccer team. The American sports magazine Sports Illustrated proclaimed the shop to be the world's coolest . The U.K.'s anoraks took to it.

Sportspages commissioned shelves that could hold the fanzines that emerged from individual club's supporters.

In the wake of the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters there was a distinct shift in the character of football. Books such as Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch: A Fan's Life capitalised upon this change in the culture. To the chattering classes sport switched from being an eccentricity to being a social accoutrement. Numerous subversive soccer fanzines were launched. Sportspages stocked many of them.

The bookshop was a major factor in shifting the nature of British. Gaustad's understanding of sports literature was a factor in publishers appreciation of the sector's potential extended beyond ghost biographies of particular players careers.

The publishing house Simon & Schuster established a Sportspages imprint. This issued a number of works that had fallen out of print.

Sportspages opened a second shop in Manchester in 1992. In 1996 the I.R.A. exploded a lorry bomb on Manchester s Corporation. The shop was destroyed in the blast.

In the West End premises rents were wracked up. Sportspages's financial difficulties were compounded by the fact that under its influence the bookshop chains had improved the quality of their sports sections and had the volume of sales to be able to undercut it. Gaustad transferred control of the business in 2003. Two years the shop closed. Gaustad was left with debts. He worked as a cab driver but continued to the chairman of William Hill Sports Book Award judges.

Location: 3-5 Caxton Walk, WC2H 8PW (orange, blue)

See Also: SPORTS

Website: wwwsportspages.co.uk

David Backhouse 2024