Bookshop open!

    Here in Scotland bookshops re-opened this week. We popped up to Topping & Co. this morning and bought the above: the A.J. Ayer is Mr. C's, we'll both read Edmund de Waal's acclaimed Letters to Camondo and Leo Marks's* Between Silk and Cyanide, while the Christopher Lloyd and Paula Byrne's biography of Barbara Pym are for me.

*Leo Marks was the son of Benjamin Marks of Marks & Co, the bookshop at the heart of Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road.

Comments

[Barbara]

I have been trying (with difficulty) to decipher the book titles behind your current pile of new books. Some of them look very well loved…. A high recommendation for me! I am so glad to see you posting again, as your info about the Great Tapestry of Scotland provided the high point of a vacation a few years ago, when we found we had booked into New Lanark just as the exhibit opened. (I was afraid my husband might be bored, but found he was entranced by the science and history while I reveled in the fiber arts and embroidery.)

Eagerly awaiting the green light to travel again..

Barbara M. In NH

[Cornflower]

Yes, some favourites there on the (mostly) biography shelf: Valerie Grove on Dodie Smith, Eudora Welty, Edmund de Waal, Angela Thirkell's Three Houses, Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris ...
I'm so glad you both enjoyed the Tapestry, Barbara. A permanent home for it is currently being constructed in Galashiels: https://pagepark.co.uk/project/architecture/tapestry/

[Constance]

I am intrigued that Leo Marks is a writer. I first ran into Helene Hanff when I was a Penguin sales rep in New York and invited her to come to my book group's 5th anniversary many years ago for which we read 84 Charing Cross Road. She was very kind to come, although I remember that when we started asking her questions, she said, "You didn't say I'd have to sing for my supper!" She asked for the leftovers to take home and we worried that the royalties from her books weren't enough to pay the bills.

[Cornflower]

Oh no!
Thank you for telling us that, Constance, and how wonderful to have met her.