Tag: Rare books

  • Pubs, foxes, Jamaica and James Bond, Haile Selassie and C.L.R. James

    Pubs, foxes, Jamaica and James Bond, Haile Selassie and C.L.R. James

    There’s reason to celebrate – the Fox Inn in Stourton has cancelled a Woodland Hunt’s end of season supper.  The owners wouldn’t comment but it is not the first pub to disassociate itself from such organised crime groups.  The Anchor in Exebridge no longer hosts the Quantock Staghounds, the Raven Inn in Powys decided not…

  • Books Old & New: Hilary Mantel

    Books Old & New: Hilary Mantel

    For many years our firm of booksellers handled the sale of Dame Hilary’s archive.  During our centenary last year I sent out monthly musings and this was my account of our dealings with her.  … Finally, this is the story of the archive of Dame Hilary Mantel.  I name her because she fully expected me…

  • Books Old & New: one hundred years of bookselling

    Books Old & New: one hundred years of bookselling

    This is from the history page of our book business website. In 1923, just before his twentieth birthday, Bertram Rota started bookselling on the Charing Cross Road. From 1918 he had apprenticed to his uncles Percy and Arthur Dobell, in their father Bertram Dobell’s bookshop which dated back to 1876. From the outset, he specialised…

  • Books Old & New: Dr Dolittle

    Books Old & New: Dr Dolittle

    These are two extracts from Animal Trust. “Hugh Lofting’s Dr Dolittle books were important. I have a lovely set of first English editions in delightful, colourful dust-wrappers. It was only on re-reading them decades later that I realised what a profound impact they had had. It wasn’t the good doctor’s ability to talk to animals…