Other Bookshops Are Available – 7 November 2025

Perhaps I ought to be careful recommending a book about a morose, cynical bookseller whose rage at customers conducting lengthy (and dull) phone conversations in his vicinity and asking for books of which he does not approve threatens to boil over into such a frenzy that he may actually throw The Power of Now at the next nose-picker interrupting his thoughts to ask for it.

Any similarity between the character working at the fictional Mute Books, who spends his leisure time reading Barbara Pym in the bath, and real persons is purely coincidental. Though he has inspired me to add a Presbyterian, his bathing drink of choice, to my cocktail repertoire.

Service by John Tottenham is excoriating and hilarious. I think you will love it. Especially if you have ever worked in retail. Or been in a shop. Or encountered people. Its setting is a small bookshop in LA, with a café and a terrace for poetry readings which last for hours, whether the select audience wish them to or not. The main character makes Bernard Black look benevolent, understanding and competent.

I’d love to spend a day at the, often loud, Mute Books despite the poor service. Fortunately there are excellent and non-fictional bookshops closer to home. A favourite is Persephone Books in Bath, which publishes and sells reprints of neglected writers. When I last made a pilgrimage there, I bought A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell, originally published in 1806 and full of helpful advice alongside the many recipes for eels, tongue and bockings (me neither), such as ‘sick cookery’ which explains the right broth for ‘any kind of weakness’, the uses for toast water (exactly what it sounds like) and the restorative powers of shank jelly (yum). Mulled wine features in this medicinal section too. A good system.

You will also learn the correct way to direct your servants in cleaning looking-glasses and how to preserve a granary from weasels. We can order Persephone titles but I strongly encourage you to go to them directly – appreciation of the exquisite range and design of the books and the shop requires full immersion.

If you’re in Bath, do pop into Bath Old Books too, a superb second-hand bookshop where I found the out-of-print autobiography,A Life Drawing by Shirley Hughes, which is full of her doodles and sketches, including early illustrations of characters beloved from her children’s books such as Alfie and the original Dogger. It is impossible to leave Bath Old Books without a stack of things you had no idea you needed, particularly from the excellent poetry section.

Visiting my parents this week, I spotted the first edition of Spring Fever by PG Wodehouse which I bought for my mother years ago in the lovely G. David in Cambridge. Both the shop and Wodehouse are a balm for all. I would like to tell you about a very kind customer who was there recently and brought me back a G. David pen. But I am fairly sure that the pens are not for sale… What ho.

The antidote, should you need it, to John Tottenham’s rampant, if very funny, acerbity and vexation comes in the form of Shopkeeping: Stories, Advice, and Observations from the Bookstore Floor by Peter Miller. This one was a gift from another very kind customer rather than a trade in stolen goods. As far as I know. It is no exaggeration to call it inspirational.

Miller’s design bookshop in Seattle sounds like heaven. His understanding of what a shop can be is profound. His attendance to every choice he makes is flawless. His stories of accidentally leaving the shop open on Christmas Eve whilst enjoying a glass of wine with fellow retailers are not totally unfamiliar.

You may well find me enjoying a glass of wine in the shop next Wednesday when we stay open late ahead of the Christmas lights being switched on, on The Mall. Do come and say hello and laugh at my inability to predict the Booker Prize which will be announced on Monday. (Sonia and Sunny, surely?)

Alongside bookshop havens, I must put in a word for libraries. Ali Smith’s collection of short stories and essays about the power and importance of public libraries is marvellous. Perhaps every local councillor and member of parliament ought to read it. If only there were somewhere from which they could borrow it.

The Friends of the Clifton Centre and Library continue to do tremendous things, including the annual literary festival. I am particularly excited about the poetry event next Saturday with Rosie Jackson, Bethany Handley and Vanessa Lampert, whose work I really admire and whom I have not yet had the chance to see performing live. To hear the three of them together will be a real treat.

May your weekend be bookshop-filled,
Lizzie