Is there any pleasure comparable to discovering a really good second-hand bookshop? I found myself in Chichester yesterday, suited and booted, after a meeting with the local Labour party. Within a few minutes’ walk of the Chichester Labour party offices (yes, they’ve had Tory MPs since 1924, but still maintain offices) I discovered Kim’s.
George Orwell, in an article for Evening Standard described the perfect London pub. From memory, it should have Victorian fittings, a barmaid who remembers your name, a garden, darts, and no radio or piano to spoil conversations (today, Orwell would say no jukebox or Sky Sports). No pub came up to his imaginary standard, although one or two almost managed it.
For me, Kim’s almost managed to be the perfect second-hand bookshop. The perfect second-hand bookshop should be arranged over several floors, including a basement, like the much-missed ones along the Charing Cross Road. There should be a sense of chaos, with books in crates and piles to the ceiling of what Virginia Woolf called ‘wild, homeless books.’ But in reality there should be a clear, order, with labelled shelves. There must be room for quirkiness, such as sections on the Occult, Anarchism or Nudism.
There should, of course, be a vast politics section, with hardback editions of the diaries of Benn, Castle and Crossman, obscure and out-of-print biographies and autobiographies by Labour figures (Ben Pimlott’s Hugh Dalton, Marquand on Ramsay Mac), a healthy smattering of Fabian pamphlets, and leftwing tomes published by the likes of Verso, Allen & Unwin, Gollancz, or Lawrence & Wishart. The joy of the perfect second-hand bookshop is the very real prospect of a ‘find’. This is a book worthless to others, but on your ‘wants’ list for years, and suddenly and unexpectedly in your hands. It helps if your mental ‘wants’ list is enormous, and the various series you’re seeking to complete are myriad.
There should be a reasonable chance that you open a political book and discover an author’s signature. I have collected a signed Harold Wilson, GDH Cole, Bill Clinton and Alan Clark this way. You might be able to stumble on a Benn, Thatcher, Healey or Callaghan if you’re lucky.
The perfect second-hand bookshop should contain books at least 30 years old, and older. The point is not to pick up a cheap copy of Blair, Mandelson or Campbell. That’s what charity shops are for. Many of the books should be Edwardian or Victorian. You should be able to touch a shelf, and feel the world before the invention of the internal combustion engine. The spines should resonate with gold leaf, and the pages wear their foxing with pride. Indeed, there should be nothing modern in the shop at all. Certainly no newspapers, carousel of greetings cards, or – horrors – shelf of new books.
In Kim’s I picked up a copy of William Morris’ News from Nowhere published by Reeves & Turner. It is a third edition, from 1892. Of course I already have News from Nowhere. In fact I have four copies, including the fifth edition published by Reeves & Turner in 1897. But to say ‘I’ve already got it’ is completely wrong. I may own copies of the same text, but there’s only one copy of this actual book, once owned by Wilfred Young (he’s signed the inside page with an ink pen), bought new from a bookshop in the reign of Queen Victoria, and now purchased by me in Chichester in May 2012.
Some veer towards the comic caricature of Black Books, with Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey too drunk or unwilling to sell any books at all. Most second-hand bookshops are little outposts of decency and civilisation, staffed by knowledgeable and unobtrusive bookworms. They are the opposite of, say, Primark which sells tasteless, disposable goods, and is staffed by people who don’t want to be there, and aren’t afraid to show it.
Last, the perfect second-hand bookshop should have a pricing policy which reflects the fact that it is a business, in competition with Oxfam Books who have the advantage of getting their stock for free, but also that the average purchaser of second-hand books probably doesn’t have a full-time job. The prices should be under a tenner, even for a decent hardback book, with a basket of beaten-up old books for 50p. At Camilla’s in Eastbourne I bought a copy of Beatrice & Sidney Webb’s book on trade unions for under a pound.
Orwell never found his perfect pub, but he did spent some months on a jobshare at Booklover’s Corner in Hampstead selling second-hand books while writing Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He didn’t like it, partly because of the dust and dirt, and mostly because of the customers. I think he would have rather approved of Kim’s in Chichester.
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Paul Richards writes a weekly column for Progress, Paul’s week in politics. He tweets @LabourPaul
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There are still two nice secondhand bookshops on Charing Cross Road with basements: Any Amount of Books and the relocated Quinto. The original Francis Edwards on the corner of Great Newport street with its twisty narrow passage leading to the basement is much missed. In London, don’t forget the lefty bookshops; the back of Bookmarks and the basement of Housmans are great for finding obscure texts no-one else would dare stock. (I found a copy of a limited print run history of the Leeds Police Force in Bookmarks, which included the story of my great-grandfather; there cannot be many Bookmarks customers who have any interest in police in Leeds)
If you go to Chatham to look in Baggins Book Bazaar, remember also to pop in to the Backroom Bookshop which is a few doors down and is smaller and much odder. The basement had a large stock of old Hansards last time I was in.
One of the best towns in England for secondhand bookshops is Cromer. One of the shops had a large stock of books about the Southern Rhodesian Labour Party.
If you’re ever in Carlisle, I highly recommend checking out “Bookcase” – it’s honestly exactly as you’ve just described.
A second hand record shop really takes some beating.
To paraphrase, Paul Richards’ opening question, is there anything Paul Richards has written that’s as pleasant to read as this piece?
Some new bookshops have excellent secondhand departments – for example, Blackwell’s in Oxford and Waterstone’s in Gower Street – even if they do not wholly conform to all of Paul Richards’ criteria. But the independent (new) bookseller does have something in common with the secondhand bookshop, most
especially interested, well read staff, and general atmosphere. (I seriously doubt that some Waterstone’s staff know anything about books, given their inane remarks on those “Staff choice” promotions.)
However, Paul Richards may be overly critical of charity bookshops – they often sell older books. A particularly good one is the Oxfam Bookshop in Bloomsbury Street, London, and the one in St Giles, Oxford.
Paul Richards mentions only in passing the personal notes one can find in second hand books.
These can often be a story (or the suggestion of one) in themselves: poignant, even mysterious. In Pilgrimage by Jennifer Lash, published posthumously, which I bought recently, the inscription, said: “Seb,
Get well soon! Love Sophie” Sophie was the daughter of the book’s author, as she says in a postcard, which was enclosed in the book. On that postcard she says she is sorry to hear about Seb’s “recent trauma”, adding: “I look forward to your recovery”. But how has a book, given in such circumstances, ended up in a secondhand bookshop – and the card with it? Did Seb survive? Books can sometimes say by other than that which is in the printed text.
I had the experience a few years ago of deciding it was about time to read some of the works of Freud. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that mainstream bookshops had the latest pop psychology but none of the classics. That’s when I discovered Black Gull Books in East Finchley, London. They had shelves of the stuff. So it’s not just the wonderful musty smell, the little notes people write, etc — used bookshops sometimes offer whole categories of books including essential ones — that the big chains won’t touch.
For a really lovely quaint bookshop which sells secondhand and collectable books on – apparently – every subject you can imagine, try Mr Books bookshop in Tonbridge, Kent. They’ve got a really imaginative window display and books literally up to the high ceiling.