ON the south side of Piccadilly, one of London’s busiest thoroughfares, is Hatchards, a bookseller that has been turning pages for more than two hundred years. It has ghosts walking in it, of Dickens, Wilde, Disraeli and Byron, and every day, as more authors pass through to sign books or merely to browse, loiter or just to see their works displayed on shelves or in windows, more names are added to its hall of fame. Founded in 1797, it is easily the oldest bookshop in London, though the honour of being the oldest in the country goes to the bookshop at Cambridge University.
Up to 5 authors in one day converge here during the Christmas season to sign their books. This bookshop, such as it is, a mass of shambles converging around a staircase, is easily the most aristocratic bookshop in this capital. It has three royal warrants, so I presume, just as members of the royal family stock their larder through Fortnum and Masons, the toff's grocery (founded 1707) just a few doors away, they get their penchant for pot boilers fulfilled here by posh voices answering their calls in the book-lined order room above stairs.
Hatchards isn’t of course the only book shop here. There are myriad others, but they are mostly now chain booksellers. Little independent shops are fast being driven away by — not so much the Internet — but rising rents. The old Charing Cross road, once the haven of antiquarian and secondhand booksellers is now, alas, under siege by eateries and tatty goods sellers. Only Foyles, that old stalwart, is still holding its own, having extended its floor space recently by its acquisition of the Central St Martins college, where our very own Dato Lat learned to draw human figures.
The result of this withdrawal of independent book stores is that few bookshops still retain the eccentricity that go with the bibliopole. Bookbuyers now no longer go to bookshops to chat about the titles available before making a choice for the visit, but merely make transactions through bankcards, have their enquiries answered by staff who pore through data streaming on the screen, and make their way out again past exhortations to buy book-linked memorabilia, hessian book bags or various instigations to light a kindle. London, unlike its rival capital city across the channel, does not support its independent booksellers like the messieurs dames over there. Recently the only bookshop in the neck of wood where I live closed the only bookshop we have in a major shopping mall, which prompted me to write to the owners of the lavish retail palace to say surely they can afford to lower the rent of just one bookshop for the delectation of us all. No reply came back to my letter; perhaps those who are against books don’t read at all.
Bookshops are the life of a city like few other. You see a street lined with bookshops and you’ll want to get off the bus to make an exploration, no matter what the language is of the country. The occasional bookshop brings character to a street, you meet the most interesting people among its browsers, and if the shop owner is like the late George Whitman of Shakespeare & Co who invited strangers to a reading session in the bookshop or gave them a place to stay for the night in return for work in the store, even better. You get to know the city almost immediately.
Why is that? This is because books are people. You go to a city and you read about its history and you know almost immediately who loves and lives there, why the town is so, and what hidden things are there for you to discover. The power of the written word permeates the psyche as you probably know from people who will believe anything as long as it is written down. Words about a city are the rudiments of its character, no matter if it is only the backdrop to a thriller. You read Dickens and you will understand London. Go further to Pepys and Stow, you will have an even bigger picture.
Recently I have been writing about how our city has been wasted and destroyed by ‘planners’. A few people have written to ask how else would I do it then if not shops, shopping malls, large offices that have their headquarters in some tax havens elsewhere. How about creating an area for books for a start? How about a street of booksellers, the small ones, the independent ones, the little quaint ones that sell books that are no longer in print for you to order from you know where?
Well, now that we are into it, how about a greener city with gardens, squares, greenery and even fruit trees in our midst, like a small town in England that I wrote about before? How about nurturing communities in an organic — but not Disneyesque — ways? How about a city with real houses for real people who live, breed and work there?
Well, how about that, how about that eh, now?
The writer is an NST columnist