Cheers
We woke up to bright sun! By noon it was gone! Now it’s raining again. But as pal Reverend Ken pointed out… “Raining AGAIN? You do know that they named those raincoats London Fog and not Roanoke Fog for a reason. Just sayin.’” I did take myself out for a walk mid-morning and found several streets blocked off for a bicycle race! http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/cycling/15351.aspx lists several happening today so I’m not sure which I saw. I’d set out to explore the are back from the Tower of London and to find the nearest Marks and Spencer though I knew it was closed today. I did eventually find my way to its location on the corner of Fenchurch St. and Grace Church Street not so far from here. As the weather was fast changing and I wasn’t sure Randal would notice and take in the laundry, I raced back in time to rescue it and not get myself rained on either. I’d been overly confident and had neither a raincoat nor umbrella, tricked by the cloudless morning sky. Now the laundry is hanging in our engine/laundry room being dried by the dehumidifier.
Yesterday Randal and I returned to Charing Cross to get a BIG London A-Z directory at Foyles Books. http://www.foyles.co.uk/ On our way we explored some of the side streets and ended up in Cecil Court. What a great place! I met the coolest woman there, Tracey Brett : read about her below. She’s the second really cool woman I’ve met in two days. Friday I met Jane Young http://sketchesbyboz.wordpress.com/ an historian of architecture and design. http://www.londonkillsme.com/ What a knowledgeable person. Actually they both were. And dedicated to their work. Passionate about their work. How many people are lucky enough to say that. (I do know several librarians and nurses who can though some of us are retired now and happy to be so!)
Anyway, this email is a stroll down Cecil Court and visits to a few of the book shops along the way. It sent me on a wild ride of information making my head start to explode; so I finally stopped. Y’all might wish I’d stopped sooner!
Enjoy!
Ru
Cecil Court Booksellers http://www.cecilcourt.co.uk/
“Graham Green quote……”Thank God Cecil Court remains Cecil Court….”
Cecil Court is a unique place for book lovers. Located in the very heart of London, a moment’s walk from Leicester Square Tube Station, Cecil Court is a picturesque late Victorian thoroughfare linking Charing Cross Road and St Martin’s Lane, pedestrianised and seemingly immune from the bustle of the great city which surrounds it.
The shop fronts have not been altered in more than a century and the traditional hanging signs announce specialists in rare and antiquarian books, maps and prints and all manner of related printed material including stamps and banknotes. Whether you are looking for weighty sixteenth-century folios, modern first editions, early maps of your area, theatre posters, children’s books and more besides, someone in Cecil Court will be able to assist…….
….fortunately for us an extraordinary array of people have left evidence of more tangible associations with Cecil Court. It was the first London address of W.A. Mozart and his family, arguably where he composed his first symphony; film pioneers such as James Williamson and Cecil Hepworth regarded ‘Flicker Alley’ as the heart of the early British film trade; a young Arthur Ransome honed his writing skills while doing as little work as possible for Ernest Oldmeadow at the Unicorn Press; long-term residents of the flats above Cecil Court include T.S. Eliot and actors such as Ellen Terry and John Gielgud, and patrons of the shops below range from Aleister Crowley to Graham Greene, by way of T.E. Lawrence. Then there are the ordinary residents of Cecil Court – not necessarily famous but often remarkably interesting – including coiners, arsonists and radical atheists; finally there are the booksellers who have made Cecil Court their own, beginning with John Watkins and the brothers William and Gilbert Foyle in the earliest years of the twentieth century…..
In 1904 William and Gilbert Foyle opened their first West End shop at number 16. After failing their Civil Service exams the brothers offered their old text books for sale and were so encouraged by the results that they opened a small shop in Peckham where they painted ‘With all faith” above the door.” (It was a second trip to the new Foyle store that led us to Cecil Court.)
In the 1930s Cecil Court became a well-known meeting place for Jewish refugees, which in 1983-4 inspired R.B. Kitaj to paint Cecil Court W.C.2. (The Refugees), a work now in the Tate Collection. An online image is available. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kitaj-cecil-court-london-wc2-the-refugees-t04115 Cecil Court was one of Kitaj’s favourite haunts and the painting was born out of an increasing awareness of his own Jewish heritage. Kitaj himself is depicted reclining in the foreground, and to the left (holding flowers) is the Cecil Court refugee bookseller Ernest Seligmann, for whom he was a regular customer.
A more unfortunate incident worthy of brief mention is the Cecil Court antique shop murder. In March 1961 Elsie Batten, a 59 year old assistant in Louis Meier’s antique shop at 23 Cecil Court, was stabbed to death. Her murderer, Edwin Bush, was identified and caught within days following the circulation of Identikit pictures – the first case to be solved in the UK using the Identikit System, a significant advance in crime detection. Full details are available on the Metropolitan Police website.” http://content.met.police.uk/Site/history
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Watkins’ Spiritual 100 List for 2013 (Very commercial list; more like authors of books about changing your life.) Published: 26 February 2010 “After more than 100 years selling books about witchcraft, astrology and black magic, London’s oldest esoteric bookshop has gone out of business. Watkins Books in historic Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road, whose customers once included occultist Aleister Crowley and WB Yeats, closed on Tuesday after trading continuously since 1897.” March 5, 2010 Watkins Books May be Saved! From an article in ‘The Bookseller’ by Victoria Gallagher: Watkins Books could live again, after an offer for the Cecil Court ‘institution’ was put in by a local businessman. The Bookseller broke the news last week that Watkins Books had closed, following the appointment of administrator Harris Lipman on 23rd February. American entrepreneur Etan Ilfeld told The Bookseller that he had made an offer for the London bookshop, which had been accepted by Harris Lipman. A spokesperson from the administrator spoken to by The Bookseller said it could not officially confirm the deal. But Ilfeld said: “I believe the spirituality of London isn’t dead and I believe a place like Watkins should be preserved.” He added that he would try and give the 11 staff their jobs back once the shop reopens. “I’ll try to make sure it is as sustainable as possible – it’s a big undertaking,” said Ilfeld. “I just want to get the doors open, every day that it is closed is just a tragedy.” Ilfeld owns art gallery Tenderpixel, which is also situated in the London side-street Cecil Court. He said that there were “major challenges” in the market but he would keep the shop as it is and use the Watkins name to build a strong website. http://philipcarrgomm.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/watkins-books-may-be-saved/ 14/3/2010 “Massive panic recently as Watkins went into administration, but glad tidings have come in the fact that the gentleman who owns the bookshop across the way is buying the place and rescuing this very important shop from liquidation. The staff are lovely here and there is a wonderful selection of Tarot cards CDs for meditation and trance work, and a lot of occult and new age books. The second hand and value books are helpfully marked with an orange sticker, and the areas of the bookshop clearly labelled. I hope that Watkins carries on going strong for another 200 years” http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/watkins-books-london http://allaboutwritingcourses.com/2011/06/28/watkins-bookstore-london/ interesting blog about Watkins from one woman’s perspective |
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About us Within our cramped confines, amid the tottering piles of newly arrived stock, you will find first editions of literary highlights in fine condition, many of which are signed or inscribed copies, beautiful illustrated books, impressively bound sets, as well as a multitude of scarce and fascinating works on a variety of subjects. Recent acquisitions, for example, include an immaculate sixteenth century herbal, Osip Mandelstam’s rare first book, a collection of books by and about the Surrealists, a pristine first edition of "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" etc, etc. But please don’t get the idea that the stock comprises nothing but the expensive and the stellar: we have prices to suit all pockets. |
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“Located in the centre of Cecil Court, the quiet pedestrian lane lined with antiquarian bookshops, tucked away in London’s bustling West End, Marchpane opened in August 1989. During the last two decades Marchpane has become well known as a specialist in children’s and illustrated books from the eighteenth century up to the present day. On our shelves you can find early publications from Newbery’s moral tales to signed first editions of Harry Potter. We stock all the best British collectable children’s books, we nearly always have copies of great classics such as Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Nursery Rhymes as well as editions of Andersen, Grimm and Perrault etc. As we specialise in Lewis Carroll, a comprehensive selection of illustrated editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is always available, together with rare Alice ephemera and some of Carroll’s more obscure works. We also stock some of the rarest Home Front and Political children’s books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” When I zoomed in on this photo I noticed a copy of Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons which I’ve been told is a collector’s item; not for reading but just for having. And I did see lots of Alice books. The shop was closed so we couldn’t go in and browse. |
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http://www.goldsborobooks.com/ Bookseller windows and web pages are an interesting study of literature; so many interesting suggestions. |
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My favorite visit of the day! http://www.talenabrett.com/ “Renowned for its unique collection of Rare Book, Map and Print Shops. The shop can be found in many guide books to London, as it was a barber’s where Amadeus Mozart had his hair cut aged 7, on his visit to London. The quaint balcony inside the shop is where the First World War poets sat when it was a tearoom, Edward Thomas, Walter de la Mare and Rupert Brooke. The film 84 Charing Cross Road was filmed inside the shop as well as the Beatrix Potter film Miss Potter. It was also home to the T.V. advert for Yellow Pages ‘J.R.Hartley Fly-Fishing’. Started by Alan Brett in 1977, it is a family run business, continued by his daughter Tracey Alena Brett. The stock is vast and spans from elizabethan documents all the way through to hollywood autographs. The vast majority of the stock is original, and over 100 years old. We have a comprehensive collection of genuine Vanity Fair Spy Cartoons dating 1869 to 1913. This is the category that the shop is most well known for. We also have thousands of Illustrated London News articles and most categories of prints covering every subject such as: |
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The shop owner Tracey Brett This shop, started by her father, has been her passion now for many years. |
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A photo of her dad, Alan Brett riding a “penny-farthing” bicycle. |
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A photo of Tracey in some kind of car Randal couldn’t guess. It was great fun talking with her. I could have stayed much longer only I was just a visitor and not really a customer so didn’t want to take up too much of her time. And Randal was waiting outside for me to get done and move along. The prints were quite affordable and I would have loved to browse longer. I’ll take myself back one day and do just that. There were some £3 near the door and I quickly picked one as a memento of the visit. On the back of the packing cardboard was written : by Alice Utley Artist : M Tempest. So, of course I had to look them up. It’s amazing what you can learn! |
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WE CERTIFY THAT THIS GENUINE ANTIQUE ENGRAVING IS NOT A REPRODUCTION.
Tales of Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig The characters were created by Alison Uttley but illustrated by Margaret Tempest http://margarettempest.com/her-life/ http://www.alisonuttley.co.uk/main.html http://www.manchester.ac.uk/ tells how apparently Uttley truly disliked Tempest! |
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http://www.londontheatrebookings.com/ If nothing else it’s a good site for seeing what’s playing. Tickets are expensive, but not as expensive as good seats in Fenway Park! |
