Why second-hand bookshops like ours are on the brink of extinction
telegraph.co.ukglorious institutions had a golden age in the late 20th century, but then came the possibility of typing the name of a much-coveted book into Google and have it pop up on a list, from which you could choose exactly what specimen of that book you wanted.
Hardcover or paperback? Dust wrapper or not? Signed by the author? When this all started it seemed as though a whole new world of choice was opening up.
Now, in retrospect, we realise that the magnificent choice we had in all those old shops was moving to life support.My devotion to second-hand books is, admittedly, rather more extreme than most.
Of my 11,000-strong book collection, three quarters are second-hand. My most treasured titles include vast numbers of Wisdens, sets of the first and second editions of Pevsner’s Buildings of England, complete sets of various novelists from Dickens to Orwell, and countless Batsford books with Brian Cook dust wrappers.My collection grew apace from the late 1980s when, newly married, my wife and I would on Saturday mornings drive around the eastern counties from one pretty market town to another, serenely inspecting the second-hand or antiquarian bookshop (the latter had more rare books and fine bindings) inevitably secreted in a corner of it.
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