City and Suburban
The Elizabethan Society is rightly protesting against the move to close England's one remaining bookshop, and let the premises as showrooms for a popular make of medium- priced spaceship. For the shop in Charing Cross Road, if not of more than quaint archi- tectural value, evokes uniquely the long-lost habit and pursuit of literature. Like the ruins of Holland House, the South Bank and the dwellings at Hampstead Garden Suburb, it draws a constant 'visitation of the historically minded both from home and abroad. Nor is it merely a museum-piece. Bibliophily is now rivalling automobilophily among antiquarian collectors, and the threatened shop is a lively resort for the barter and sale of printed pieces from the twentieth century backwards. The proprietor, moreover, is often himself to be seen reading. These tangible evidences of the past should not be lightly surrendered.
(A. D. BENNETT JONES)
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