The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-73

Product Information

Much like the Parisian literary salons of the 1920s that played host to F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and were ruled over by the formidable Gertrude Stein, Heywood Hill became the place to be seen if you were a writer in London during the war years. John had a huge acquaintance and many customers became friends, including Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire. Their shared bookish adventures included a decade of annual pilgrimages to Chatsworth to award the Heywood Hill Literary Prize. In 1947 the family returned to Britain, William Saumarez Smith becoming involved in church administration, latterly as appointments secretary to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. But Buchanan turned out to be a pompous and patronising figure, whom Evelyn Waugh once described as possessing all “the concealed malice of the underdog”. Before long he and the even more malicious Mollie had succeeded in alienating both staff and customers. Hill retired in 1966 and retreated to Suffolk rather than endure the couple any longer. John is survived by his devoted wife and their two talented sons. We send sincere condolences to them all. At Heywood Hill we salute John for his unstinting tenure at our helm, and the indelible mark he has left on the place.

He joined Heywood Hill as an assistant to the splendidly named Handasyde (“Handy”) Buchanan, who had been taken on as a partner in 1945 by the shop’s founder, a gentle, bookish old Etonian. Buchanan had previously worked for another antiquarian bookshop in Curzon Street which had been bombed out; his wife Mollie was already working in Heywood Hill in charge of accounts. John had a first-class mind including a truly prodigious memory for both books and people. He came to personify Heywood Hill for his many admirers across the world. John’s scholarly air, mischievous grin and deep, broad book knowledge made Heywood Hill a magnet for the affluent well-read. His style was perfectly suited to the book-lined stage of this little shop. Annual trips to America added many transatlantic customers to our ledgers and John was warmly welcomed into bookish drawing-rooms, and indeed libraries, everywhere. Saumarez Smith edited two collections of correspondence, which gave a fascinating glimpse into 20th-century literary London through the perspective of the distinguished, sometimes dysfunctional, bookshop staff.

He also sold a set of Winston Churchill’s four-volume life of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, written in the 1930s, that had once resided at Windsor Castle. The first volume was inscribed by Churchill to “the Prince of Wales”; the second to “HRH Prince of Wales”; the third to “King Edward”, and the fourth to “the Duke of Windsor”. Alison Flood (30 September 2016). "Prize of a lifetime: London bookshop offers free books for the rest of your life | Books". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 July 2017. In 1969 he married Laura, daughter of the architect Raymond Erith, who survives him with their two sons. Over the years he took on a series of poorly remunerated but bookish assistants, many of whom, inspired by his traditional approach to book-selling, went on to make their own names in the independent book trade. These days, it is globally renowned for its library building services and highly personal yearly subscription. Holding a Royal Warrant, it is also beloved by the Queen, has an entire bookshelf dedicated to PG Wodehouse and in John Le Carre’s novels is George Smiley’s bookshop of choice.

Algy Cluff OBE was born in 1940. He served for six years in the Army in West Africa, Cyprus and Borneo. A pioneer of North Sea oil exploration, he founded Cluff Oil in 1972. This lead to the discovery of the Buchan Field. There followed thirty years of exploration in the gold industry in Africa and the discovery and development of gold mines. He remains active in the oil business. Algy was the proprietor of The Spectator for five years and its Chairman for a further twenty. He was the proprietor of other magazines, including Apollo and the Literary Review. Under his benign stewardship, however, Heywood Hill remained a sanctuary for the book lover. The keys to his success were his scholar’s passion for books (he not only knew the books he sold, but their full publishing history), and his phenomenal memory for and interest in his customers and their likes and dislikes. Featuring stunning, specially commissioned photography of the gardens and parkland, alongside long-forgotten images and memorabilia newly unearthed in the estate archives, this vivid companion, crowded with character and colour, is a book to treasure and revisit over and over again. Christopher Hibbert; Ben Weinreb (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. pp.395–396. ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5 . Retrieved 11 July 2017. They bring a focus not only to love of the canon, but also cherishing the feel of a book as a wonderful object. While the specific titles are subject to availability, the majority are available to gift to yourself or others and bring an elegant literary flair to any home.

WELCOME TO THE LITERARY REVIEW BOOKSHOP

Mitford’s early novels did not provide her with enough money with which to live securely, and much of her work served to further rip at the fraught threads of her family relationships. Following the poor reception of her early books and Britain once again entering a devastating war, Nancy became completely disillusioned with writing, and in the spring of 1942 took a job at a small bookshop that was a two and a half mile walk from her Maida Vale home. Several tomes later, and with due deference to Stoppard and Wilde, Algy has taken the suggestion on board. Here you will discover why Ian Fleming never achieved his heart's desire, delve into the Guinness Affair, marvel at the fast and louche life of the ‘Peter Pan of Mayfair’ and accompany the author to - and then swiftly away from - a disastrous dinner with Princess Margaret. Alongside come despatches from the gold mining and oil industries and a reflection on the parlous state of humour in the modern world, among other eclectic gems from the pen of a true character. The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street (2004), published in the centenary year of the birth of the shop’s most famous former employee, Nancy Mitford, who had worked there from 1942 to 1945, consisted of correspondence between her and the shop’s founder, George Heywood Hill, during the war – and afterwards, when she lived in France but maintained a close interest in the shop until her death in 1973. Heywood Hill is a bookshop at 10 Curzon Street in the Mayfair district of London. [1] History [ edit ] The shop was opened by George Heywood Hill on 3 August 1936, with the help of Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy, who would later become his wife. [2] [3]

First edition inscribed by John Muir, “To Mrs Lester S Abberley with compliments of John Muir Dec 23rd 1927.”After he left Heywood Hill, John continued to deal in books from John Sandoe and Maggs Bros. He was a natural writer who reviewed books widely and provided always considered advice to librarians and their patrons. Many across the book world will mourn him. From Winchester, where he was a scholar, John Saumarez Smith read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Before going up, thinking that he might like to go into publishing, he took a temporary job in the science department of the Cambridge bookshop Heffers.

The year is 1936: Jesse Owens embarrasses the Third Reich at its own Olympics, Edward VIII ascends the throne and Heywood Hill, a little bookshop on Curzon Street in Mayfair, opens its doors for the first time. Named after the proprietor George Heywood Hill, an Old Etonian who married the daughter of the Earl of Cranbrook, the bookshop initially specialised in first and limited editions as well as Victorian toys, with most of its clientele aristocrats due to its affluent location. Throughout his lifetime John devoted his considerable intellectual energies to sifting the literary wheat from the chaff, in search of the beautiful, the important or the plain enjoyable. For London’s Artemis Fund Managers, chair John Dodd wanted a library that would inspire his partners and associates in freedom of thought. “Thinking independently is a defining strand of the DNA of the partnership,” Dunne explains. Heywood Hill’s concept was simple and yet provocative, what Dunne describes as “a readers’ library that captures capitalism in all its layers and colors: the heroes, the villains, the groundbreakers, the headbangers, people with good ideas and bad, those who innovated and those whose ideas were in fact dead ends, people who moved markets in the past and who are moving them in the present.”

For the last three years of the Second World War, while George Heywood Hill was in the Army, Lady Anne ran the shop with the assistance of the novelist Nancy Mitford. [4] In 1949 Elizabeth Forbes, the daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, joined the staff of the store where she worked prior to her career as a journalist, music critic, and musicologist. [5] John Saumarez Smith who had joined the staff straight from Cambridge in 1965, took up the reigns as manager in 1974, a position he held for over thirty years. [6] In 1991, the shop was bought by Nancy Mitford's brother-in-law, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire. [7] Robin Birley is a unique and wonderful Mayfair figure who whose family have been Heywood Hill supporters for generations,” Dunne says of one of London’s most admired—and socially connected—entrepreneurs. Birley’s late father, Mark, was the founder of the club Annabel’s, itself named for Birley’s alluring mother Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, a marquess’s daughter who famously went on to wed financier Sir James Goldsmith. His grandfather Sir Oswald Birley was one of high society’s most celebrated portraitists in the first half of the 20th century, and his father’s sister was Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent’s right-hand woman. As for Birley himself, like his father, he is an connoisseur of art and antiques who has founded a handful of admired private clubs, among them 5 Hertford Street, where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly had their first date, and Oswald’s, an elegant wine club that opened last year. He’s presently eyeing clubbable outposts in New York City. Follow Alan into Chatsworth's irresistible world of visionaries, pioneers, heroes, villains and English eccentrics, and celebrate the men and women who have shaped the history of the estate over five centuries. With his passionate knowledge of both the house and gardens, as well as his long-established relationship with the Cavendish family, Alan is the perfect guide with whom to explore the Palace of the Peaks.