The Spitalfields Life blog by the pseudonymous 'The Gentle Author' is always full of fascinating information about the byways of London, including interviews with shopkeepers, tradespeople, hobbyists and others which give interesting insights into their life and occupation.
The latest post celebrates The Bookshops of Old London, with a personal recollection by the author of his days as an impoverished youth still determined to seek out rare books, and with atmospheric black and white photographs by Richard Brown of the bookshops as they were in 1971. These enjoyable depict both neat, orderly, elegant emporia and those with tottering columns and shambling shelves. 'It made me realise how much I miss them all now that they have mostly vanished from the streets,' The Gentle Author repines.
It is true that many familiar names are no longer to be seen in Charing Cross Road and its purlieus, and quite natural that the glory days of youthful book collecting will be remembered with affection. However, all is not bitter. There are still about two dozen second-hand bookshops in the postal districts of West Central and East Central London, according to the ever-helpful listings at The Book Guide, and of course many more in the widening ripples of the city. Any Machenesque wanderer exploring the obscurer roads and regions of the capital in quest of a London Adventure may still chance upon them.
I was amused to find the term 'Old London', which to me might denote Victorian or Edwardian times, is here applied to the Nineteen Seventies, a time I remember and still regard as contemporary. But then I reflected that it is, after all, half a century ago . . .
(Mark Valentine)
Image: 'E. Joseph of Charing Cross Rd, established 1885', by Richard Brown, from The London Bookshop (Private Libraries Association, 1971)
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