J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Secondhand bookshops

Stasis Revisited: Part Two

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So now, as promised in Monday’s Part 1, here’s my utterly personal and idiosyncratic ‘top five’ of UK secondhand bookshops. As in the previous post, everything in black font after the section break below is material originally posted five years ago, when I only produced a top three; everything in red is brand new, and some of it was inspired by my recent break in Galloway, which also saw me ‘raid’ two of the UK’s booktowns, Scotland’s at Wigtown and England’s at Sedbergh.

So here goes…

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In the original version of this post, I gave honourable runner-up mentions to Dunkeld Antiques, Ystwyth Books in Aberystwyth and Eric T Moore in Hitchin, but the first and last of those have now gone (although Eric T Moore is still a going concern online, and does regular ‘pop-up shops’ at events in the area). To replace them, I’ll bring in Carmarthen Rare Books, one of my principal sources for obscure Welsh history tomes, and David’s Books in Letchworth, which comes with the bonuses of a big floor of new books downstairs plus its own music shop with a decent selection of classical CDs. Westwood Books in Sedbergh, the star find of my recent trip, also runs the Top Five close – a big, airy shop with comfy sofas and easily the best arranged History section I’ve ever come across in a secondhand bookshop, i.e. absolutely perfect chronological order (in marked contrast to a certain unnamed big bookshop in Hay-on-Wye which has a vast History section, but where the books are in totally random order, making it probably the only place on the planet where Hitler rubs shoulders with Hildegard of Bingen). On the other hand, Westwood is just too organised for a secondhand shop, as the History section suggests…it makes London’s legendary, and now clinically laid out, bookshop, Foyles, seem random and untidy, which, of course, is what the much-missed previous incarnation of Foyles was actually like (not to mention its extraordinarily idiosyncratic method of paying for the books, where you picked up a docket naming your book from one desk and took it to another where you could actually pay).

Some may be surprised that I haven’t included in my Top Five the vast megastores of the secondhand bookshop world, notably the three biggest shops in the UK, the Hay Cinema bookshop (biggest of all, and not the one mentioned in the previous paragraph), Barter Books in Alnwick (an utter delight housed in a former Victorian railway station) and Baggins Book Bazaar in Rochester, which, of course, wins the ‘greatest secondhand bookshop name of all’ competition hands down. Don’t get me wrong, I love all three of these, have spent many hours, and, indeed, many pounds in them – but the problem with them all is that they’re simply too big. In most secondhand bookshops, for example, you know that a decent browse of the History section is usually going to take you between 10 and 30 minutes. At Hay Cinema, though, and to an extent at the other two, a similar exercise means that you’ll probably miss lunch and will be lucky to make dinner, and that’s without attempting to explore any other sections at all. 

You’ll also notice that I haven’t included any secondhand bookshops in London, despite the fact that there are many glorious ones; my personal favourite is the one in Kew, just round the corner from the National Archives. But the problem with secondhand bookshops in London is pretty much exactly the same as the problem with trying to buy a house in London. I’ve also omitted the very few remaining specialist naval and maritime shops because they are, collectively, Nirvana, and thus on an entirely different astral plane. On the other hand, I hardly ever buy anything in them these days, for the reasons I outlined in Part 1 of this post; not to mention the fact that I sometimes buy something I’m convinced I don’t have, only to get home and find it already sitting on my shelves.

All of that said, then, here’s my completely subjective ‘top five’ of the secondhand bookshops in the UK that I happen to have been to. 

5/ The Brazen Head Bookshop, Burnham Market, Norfolk – So here’s a recipe for a perfect day for anyone who loves the sea and naval history: morning, walking along the vast and frequently empty Holkham Beach; early afternoon and a couple of miles away, browsing in the Brazen Head, a wonderful old building which always has a great stock of naval and historical books as well as an excellent local history section; late afternoon into evening, paying respects to Nelson in the church at nearby Burnham Thorpe, where his father was rector and lies buried along with various other family members, followed by food and drink in the Lord Nelson pub, one of the comparatively few in Britain that still has no bar and where Nelson allegedly entertained his neighbours on his last night before setting out to take command of the Agamemnon in 1794. Bliss.

(The last sentence was written long before the pub closed; it’s meant to be reopening some time, or so the brewery says. When it does, the Brazen Head might climb the chart!) 

4/ Ross Old Books – There are navigational tools that are more powerful than SatNav. One of these kicks in whenever I come off the M50 and see the signs to Ross-on-Wye. ‘Turn left’, says a voice. ‘Turn left and look at nice books,’ it says. ‘Buy nice books,’ it says, ‘if you turn left’. And so, yes, sometimes (but not always, because I have willpower), I turn left. Ross is a gorgeous town anyway, but its secondhand bookshop is a delight, with really friendly staff and a surprisingly strong naval and maritime history section, where I often find something that I never knew existed. The other thing that always tickles me in Ross is that it must possess one of the least notable blue plaques in Britain. OK, it commemorates Nelson, which is an obvious plus in my book. But commemorates what, you ask? Did Nelson explain his battle plan for the Nile there? No. Did he bonk Lady Hamilton there? No. (Well, maybe he did, but people turned a blind eye. Boom, tsh.) Did he ask Hardy to kiss him there? No. (Ditto.) Did he simply go for a walk in a garden there, and that’s thought worthy of a blue plaque? Oh yes.

3/ Edinburgh – OK, yes, I’ve copped out here. There are a lot of wonderful secondhand bookshops in Edinburgh. There are also a lot of wonderful pubs in Edinburgh. If one maps out one’s day properly, one can go from bookshop to pub to bookshop… I’m not actually saying I can’t remember which is my favourite Edinburgh bookshop, but there’sh alsho a very nyshe cashtle on top of a really, really, really big hill, too. Really really big. Cashtle. Big. Booksh. Pubsh. More booksh.

2/ Pennyfarthing, North Berwick – The words ‘quirky’ and ‘eclectic’ might have been invented for this place. North Berwick in East Lothian is always worth spending time in: it has another of my favourite beaches, one of my favourite whisky shops, and just down the road is my joint favourite castle, Tantallon. (The other, before anyone asks, is Carreg Cennen in Carmarthenshire.) And then there’s Pennyfarthing, barely a stone’s throw from the ruins of the old kirk where the notorious witch trials of 1590 took place. An odd range of antiques rubs shoulders with a weird and wonderful stock of books, with Scottish history shelves that always contain titles of interest, and a top shelf which houses Nigel Tranter first editions, including occasionally some signed ones (he lived just a few miles down the coast). I’m not sure if it’s still the case (maybe not – remember this paragraph was originally written five years ago), but until fairly recently Pennyfarthing also had a strong candidate for the oldest and deafest shop assistant in the country!

1/ Harrowden Books of Finedon – This is how secondhand bookshops should be. Small but densely packed with a wonderful range of books, a highly knowledgeable and friendly owner who’s always looking to try out new ideas (e.g. ghost walks!) and to freshen things up, rather than presiding over the same old stock in the same old places on the shelves from one year to the next, as is the case in so many shops –  but before you all rush up there and crush Mike in the stampede, you need to plan your expedition with military precision, for the shop is fiendishly difficult to find in Finedon (principal claim to fame – the Rev. Richard Coles is the vicar), which itself is fiendishly difficult to find in Northamptonshire, which in turn, if you’re one of my American or Australian or [insert nationality of choice] readers, is fiendishly difficult to find in the UK. But for those wishing to make a day of it, Harrowden Books can be the pinnacle of a glorious ‘golden triangle’ of bookshop touring, taking in the excellent shops in Uppingham and Stamford on the way to the delights of Finedon.

Oh well, enough for today – time to go and figure out how I can try to free up some space for the books that are likely to come my way at Christmas…

And strangely enough, here we are, almost exactly five years later, and I urgently need to go and undertake an identical exercise!

 

Stasis Revisited: Part One

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Last week, I used my recent holiday in Galloway as a perfect excuse to update an older post about King Arthur, first published four years ago when this site had a much, much smaller following than it does now. This week, I’m doing a similar exercise with an even older post, from the very early days of the blog back in 2012. I know that a hardy few of you have been following ever since then, and that an even smaller number of you are, indeed, still at liberty. However, a break which involved visits to not one but two of the United Kingdom’s ‘booktowns’ within the space of a week provides me with an obvious excuse and opportunity to re-post my earlier musings on the theme of secondhand bookshops, supplemented by a significant amount of new text. In the post that follows, therefore, everything in red is new;* and because the new material has expanded it considerably, I’m splitting it into two this week, with the second part to come on Thursday. 

In other news, tomorrow night I’ll be at the annual Christmas dinner of the Historical Writers Association in London, which coincides neatly with my being very close to completing the first of my new Tudor naval stories for Endeavour Ink. Six days should be just about enough time for me to recover sufficiently from the dinner to compose a new post – and if all goes to plan, I’ll link the two things and talk about one of the most important aspects of how historical novelists go about their business. 

In the meantime, though, let’s open the strangely sticky door, enter the chaotic premises behind it, smell the unmistakeable and glorious odour of old books, wonder just what on earth the other smells in the building could be, check just how grumpy/eccentric/totally barking the owner is, step carefully past the tottering piles of books stacked randomly in every nook and cranny, and begin one of the most pleasurable activities a human being can enjoy while keeping his or her clothes on, namely browsing the shelves of a good old-fashioned secondhand bookshop.

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A strange thing happens to me in secondhand bookshops these days. Time was when I couldn’t go into one without leaving laden down with books. Now, though, I invariably browse the shelves and think ‘got that…got that…don’t need that…got that…’. I used to have a lengthy ‘wants list’ on Abebooks, but now it’s virtually empty. So at some point in the last few years, I clearly attained a bookish version of a state of stasis. There are three obvious reasons for this.

Firstly, I’ve now finally got all the books I need for my day-to-day research on my own shelves – and plenty more besides. Calendars of State Papers, Domestic? Check – vast green volumes, most of which I bought for a pittance in Hay-on-Wye many years ago. Even the incredibly rare Historical Manuscripts Commission Ormonde Manuscripts, New Series – all eight huge volumes worth? Check – bought from a bookshop in Galway a few years ago, with yours truly getting in just before two other potential purchasers who were slightly less quick off the mark. And so on: the complete Pepys Diary, dozens of Navy Records Society volumes, etcetera, etcetera.

Secondly, my switch to becoming primarily a writer of fiction means I don’t need so many really obscure books anyway: at the end of the day, do I really, really need all those volumes of HMC Ormonde? Ah, but then, one of the ideas on the ‘unbelievably long term possible projects list’ is a biography of Thomas, Earl of Ossory, for which the HMC volumes would be essential, so they’d better stay just in case I decide to write that book in 10 years time…

Thirdly, of course, there’s the space issue. The Lair (aka my office) has reached a state of stasis by default: it’s full. There’s an Overflow Lair in the house, and that’s almost full too. Not to mention the stuff that’s been relegated to the loft. So there’s the concern that just one more book, even the slimmest paperback, would have an effect similar to that last ‘waffer-thin mint’ on Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life; which is one reason why quite a few, but still by no means all, of my purchases in the category ‘mindless fiction to chill out to’ go onto the Kindle. Hang on, though. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, are now all online…as are the Navy Records Society volumes…so couldn’t I free up a huge amount of shelf space and make a fair bit of money by getting rid of them? Ah, but they look so good on the shelves…and there’s something particularly satisfying about opening an ancient tome to check a reference in it…and they’re like old friends, really…

(You may be wondering how I wrote that last paragraph five years ago, and yet still managed to come back from the week before last’s trip to Scotland with a grand total of *ahem* books. Yes, I’m still wondering that, too…)

But there’s another factor that partly explains the drying up of the once-constant flow of books into my tender loving care and onto my straining bookshelves. In the last fifteen years or so, many of my favourite secondhand bookshops have bitten the dust. There used to be a glorious one in Stourport-on-Severn, the Worcestershire canal town from which one set of my great-grandparents hailed, which for some reason always had a terrific range of naval books and really good fiction first editions in nearly mint condition. There was another in Bridge of Allan near Stirling, where I picked up for a song many of the books upon which I based much of the research for Blood of Kings. Less salubrious, but always worth spending an hour in, was the ramshackle old bookshop in Dillwyn Street, Swansea, which had a vast, dark, damp back room, truly a land that Health and Safety forgot, where I picked up many classic titles, some of which were even free of mould; a few have survived long enough to still find a place on my shelves today, notably the more obscure sequels to The Three Musketeers, such as Louise de la Valliere and The Viscomte de Bragelonne.

But enough nostalgia; not only is the past a foreign country, you can’t obtain an entry visa for love nor money. There are still some amazing secondhand bookshops around the country, though, and also some distinctly odd ones. There’s the one in Tenby which is simply impossible to enter if literally one other person is browsing the shelves by the door; the books are piled so high, and so precariously, that the skeleton of a browser who was crushed by a fall of books in 1993 is said still to lie somewhere in the British Topography section. Admittedly, I’ve never been to the one in Hawes in North Yorkshire, where the owner attracted national publicity by charging browsers 50p just to come into the shop, but last week I revisited the Bookshop in Wigtown, a big favourite of mine (many bookshops provide comfy chairs; this one has a gallery with a bed), where the owner is famous for satirising or denigrating his customers on social media even when they’re still in the shop. Indeed, he’s even written a book which draws upon said comments – I’m just hoping I’m not in it… 

Anyway, in the original version of this post, I concluded with a ‘top three’ of my favourite secondhand bookshops. In Part 2, which I’ll publish on Thursday, I’ll provide an updated and expanded version, i.e. a ‘top five’. Detached and objective? Nope – totally subjective and completely irrational. Watch this space!

 

*  A select few of my readers will know exactly why having the font colours of this post as black and red is particularly pleasing to me.