I have only just discovered that the wonderful London foreign-language bookshop, Grant and Cutler, is now located at Foyles on the Charing Cross Road (and has been since March 2011).
I am particularly fond of Grant and Cutler because I was a frequent customer during my undergraduate days. It was located in Buckingham St in a wonderfully labyrinthine building down by the River. The rooms were small and stuffed from top to bottom with all sorts of fascinating tomes; one could easily allow a couple of hours to pass unnoticed ensconced in the atmospheric surroundings.
After graduating, I was employed in the shop's German department after the business had relocated to Great Marlborough St. This was a very lively area - just next to Liberty's and Carnaby St and directly behind Oxford St. I was assigned a desk in the middle of the shop with a typewriter that looked as if it might have been state-of-the-art in 1936 when the shop first opened its doors but which looked decidedly antiquated by the time I came to use it. I don't think the little finger on my left hand has ever quite recovered from the force needed to hit the "a" and "z" keys ("z" is much more commonly used in German than in English). Computers were not in common use at the time and unbelievable as this may sound these days we managed perfectly well with ordering and despatching books without their advantages.
I shall make a point of going to visit the shop in its new incarnation when I am next in London and see if I can spot any former colleagues lurking behind piles of Goethe plays and Kafka novels. I don't suppose their desks will be in the middle of the shop!
The next piece of bookshop news is slightly more current. Waterstones has recently announced that it is opening a bookshop selling Russian-language books in its Piccadilly branch. A bit of healthy competition for Foyles perhaps?
I am particularly fond of Grant and Cutler because I was a frequent customer during my undergraduate days. It was located in Buckingham St in a wonderfully labyrinthine building down by the River. The rooms were small and stuffed from top to bottom with all sorts of fascinating tomes; one could easily allow a couple of hours to pass unnoticed ensconced in the atmospheric surroundings.
After graduating, I was employed in the shop's German department after the business had relocated to Great Marlborough St. This was a very lively area - just next to Liberty's and Carnaby St and directly behind Oxford St. I was assigned a desk in the middle of the shop with a typewriter that looked as if it might have been state-of-the-art in 1936 when the shop first opened its doors but which looked decidedly antiquated by the time I came to use it. I don't think the little finger on my left hand has ever quite recovered from the force needed to hit the "a" and "z" keys ("z" is much more commonly used in German than in English). Computers were not in common use at the time and unbelievable as this may sound these days we managed perfectly well with ordering and despatching books without their advantages.
I shall make a point of going to visit the shop in its new incarnation when I am next in London and see if I can spot any former colleagues lurking behind piles of Goethe plays and Kafka novels. I don't suppose their desks will be in the middle of the shop!
The next piece of bookshop news is slightly more current. Waterstones has recently announced that it is opening a bookshop selling Russian-language books in its Piccadilly branch. A bit of healthy competition for Foyles perhaps?