Of books and bookmen
July 15th 2008

ILast Friday was very exciting, I spent two hours in the morning working in our wonderful local Stroud Bookshop in Stroud High Street.  This was to promote Independent Book Week, which celebrated the wonder of independent bookshops and how essential they are for both readers and writers.  Although many of these shops are thriving, they are still battling to compete with the big chains and with Amazon.

I had great fun, met lots of lovely customers, and ably assisted by Anne and Claire sold a wide range of books.  I also once again once again appreciated how hard booksellers work. 

Earlier in the day, I had done an interview with Radio Gloucester about my visit to the shop.  I could, however, hardly contain my excitement because just before I went on air, I heard on the news that the proposed badger cull had been abandoned in England.

Scientific evidence has proved that badgers are not infecting cows with TB – it’s the other way round.  I’m truly sorry for the farmers, it must be a bitter blow for them, but I’m so relieved for the dear badgers.  The only sadness is that the Welsh are still going ahead with their intended cull, at a massively extravagant estimated cost of £23 million.  There was a rally protesting against this in Cardiff on Saturday.  I sent along this poster along trying to persuade the Welsh Assembly to change their minds.

Finally, the last time I served in a bookshop was back in the 70s when I spent a riotous day behind the counter at Hatchards, Piccadilly.  This was described in the following Sunday Times column, and reprinted in a collection of my pieces called Jolly Superlative.

‘Of books and bookmen’

One of my weaknesses when I’ve had slightly too jolly a lunch is tottering out of Soho, along Piccadilly to Hatchards bookshop.  Bibulous, I become bibliomaniac – and, not content with acquiring at least half a dozen books on the flimsy excuse that I might need them for research, I then feel guilty about the rest of my family and charge round the shop spending fortunes on children’s books and military history.  Thank God the cats and dogs can’t read.
            Hatchards, established nearly 180 years ago, is run by two whizz-grownups, very appropriately named Joy and Giddy,  Tommy Joy, a pint-sized Dickensian optimist  (office motto – the best is only just good enough for my staff) is the overall boss.  Peter Giddy, Runyonesque and deadpan, buys in the books, and runs the shop.  Since they took over ten years ago, they have boosted the turnover from £300,000 to much more than £1 million.
            Last week I spent a day working in the shop trying to find out the secret of the book-selling trade.  Putting on a bright Anyone for Tennyson smile, I lined up behind the cash desk with Peter Giddy, two pretty assistants, and a jolly Junoesque lady called Miss Parker who seems to know who wrote and published every book since the year dot.
            Off we went ramming books into black and gold carrier bags, ringing up large sums on the till.  Among the Elephants, lavishly displayed in the window, was selling well, so were the latest revelations about Dorothy Sayers.  Outside the shop a disabled ex-serviceman was playing the Waltz from Doctor Zhivago on the accordion.  All the assistants wore flat shoes…I could see why after half an hour, my feet were killing me.
            A woman strode in wearing a pull-on felt and tweed coat.  ‘Ghosts of London?’ she brayed.
            ‘You’ll find them at the back of the shop,’ said Miss Parker.  Chauffeurs leaving their Rolls outside kept coming in to pick up books.  A notice pinned to the cash desk said that Princess Maria of Jahore was waiting for the Cunards and Niarchos.
            An old man with a monocle stood in the centre of the shop for an hour turning purple in the face as he read Leslie Thomas’s Tropic of Ruislip.
            ‘In one shop I worked,’ said Peter Giddy, ‘a man came in every day in his lunch hour and read War and Peace, and when he finished the manager gave him the book.’
            I was staggered how hard the assistants worked, not just ringing up the till and putting pound notes under the bull-dog clip, but the endless searching for books, and looking up in large works of reference to see if a book was still in print, then telephoning the publishers to see if it was available, and being charming all the time.  Mr Joy went out beaming to lunch.
            ‘Every day’s like Christmas at Hatchards,’ he said.
            A middle-aged woman in a rust trilby was buying the Dorothy Sayers biography.
            ‘A bit of a bombshell, wasn’t it,’ she said, ‘I never knew she had a baby, but I shall still like her.’  She added, turning rather pink, ‘Isn’t it mingy – the price of books today.’
            Throughout the day we watched authors coming in and looking round the shop for their books, then surreptitiously sliding them up to the top of the pile.
            A grey-haired assistant went out carrying a string bag: ‘Do you think James is safe left in Natural History?’ she asked.
            During the lunch hour the shop filled up with brandy fumes, cigar smoke and striped-shirted smoothies from the clubs.  Flat-sharers in headscarves, and students in blanket coats headed for the paperback department.
            There were also hordes of Tory Ladies up from the country on whistle-stop tours taking in Harrods for a few remnants, breadcrumbed plaice, and sherry in the ladies’ annexe, and the Turner Exhibition.
            ‘Have you got Quilting by Margaret Cutbush?’ shouted one.
            The man on the accordion switched to Mighty like a Rose.
            ‘Quick,’ said Peter Giddy, ‘put in a gardening window.’
            ‘What ruderies have we got from W.H.Allen?’ said Miss Parker, unpacking a large parcel of books.  ‘Dogs and Lions on the first floor,’ she added in answer to a passing Deb.
            People kept sidling up to me, and saying: ‘Are you the Cash Desk?’
            I nearly gave a young man a heart attack ringing up £20.75 for a novel costing £2.75, then nearly had a heart attack myself at the sight of my old dormitory prefect in a camel-hair coat and a green Alice Band peering at the Elephant book.
            All I had to say was: ‘Gosh, Piggy, do you remember me?’  Instead, shaking with Upper Fourth nerves, I sneaked off to lunch.  When I got back I learned that she’d bought three books, and I’d missed the Duke of Kent and John Le Carré.
            I had a look round the shop.
            One of the joys of the Rare Books department upstairs is that for 32p they will try to trace any book for you.  Recently I was distraught to lose my copy of Diary of a Provincial Lady – within four weeks they had found me a first edition.
            Next door, ablaze with colour, was the new children’s book department, where it was nice to see old favourites like Little Black Sambo and Strewell Peter holding their own against Richard Scarry and Dr Seuss.
            Rather too adjacent in the poetry department, two men in fur coats with handbags were noisily reading Baron Corvo’s poems:
            ‘Dear little boy whose bright brave face will so long o’er me lie,’ said one.
            ‘Let’s buy it for Matthew,’ said the other.
            I went back to sell behind the cash desk.  A man in a dirty mac strode up to me, breathing heavily.  ‘Where can I find crime?’ he asked.
            Two more Tory ladies, scarlet from the hairdresser’s, came in and read through the index of the Edward VIII book to see if they or any of their friends were mentioned.
            Christopher Lee of Dracula fame headed for the history department sucking a sweet.
            ‘Better than blood,’ I said.
            ‘Perhaps he’s trying to give it up,’ said Miss Parker.
            A dramatic-looking man in a green cloak walked round the shop ostentatiously holding two copies of Green mantle.
            Down in the paperback department, a husband and wife were having tight-lipped altercations over a Simon Raven novel.
            ‘I know we haven’t read it, Charles.’
            ‘Yes we have, Pamela.’
            ‘We’re always having that kind of argument down here,’ said an assistant in an undertone.  ‘Paperback publishers change their jackets so often people never know if they’ve read a book or not.’
            Nigel Nicolson’s exposé of his parents’ sexual junketings, now issued in paperback, was selling as well as the Elephants and Dorothy Sayers upstairs.
            Obviously, if one wanted to produce a real blockbuster, one should encourage a literary Lesbian Elephant to write her memoirs.
            The shop was closing, the lights being flicked on and off, and the last customers hurried out, as a glorious-looking blonde smothered in furs and Fortnum’s carrier bags, with the air of one never refused admittance anywhere, sailed into the shop and bought a couple of novels.
            ‘Too pricey for me,’ said a male assistant looking at her wistfully, ‘I’ll have to wait until she comes out in paperback.’