London’s hidden street lined with old book shops

HLN-STORY4A-240125 London’s hidden street lined with old book shops

Transcript

00:00This is Cecil Court, one of London's hidden gems. Its nickname is Bookseller's Row,

00:06with bookshops on the street that are over 100 years old.

00:11I think it's a rather lovely thing, you know, there aren't that many bookshops concentrated

00:17into one particular area in London anymore, and although Charing Cross Road used to be

00:21full of the most exquisite bookshops all the way up and down Charing Cross Road,

00:26this is now the one tiny area that's left, and this bookshop in particular was the origins

00:33of Foyles Bookshop, which was the largest bookshop in the world at one point, but which

00:38is now a little bit further up on Charing Cross Road.

00:41Yeah, so it was founded in 1989 by a man called Kenneth Fuller, and we've specialised in Alice

00:48in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass ever since we opened. We have an original

00:52Dalek from 1975, and we buy and sell all sorts of different rare children's books

01:01dating back to the late 17th, early 18th centuries, right through to now. We have a lot of people

01:08who come in asking about Harry Potter, or Grimm's Fairy Tales, or the Moomin books,

01:14and we have plenty of those examples as well as many other things, so.

01:18At the moment we have a lot more people bringing books into the shop to sell rather than the

01:24people want to buy.

01:25Oh, really? That's interesting.

01:27Well, we're in a recession.

01:29It's the most exquisite book. It's Grey's Elegy, illustrated by a man called Owen Jones,

01:38but it has the most exciting, most beautiful cover, which looks like carved wood, but it's

01:44actually leather, tooled leather, and it was published in 1842, 1846, and it's just one of

01:52the most exquisite illuminated manuscripts I've ever seen. It was published as an illuminated

01:57manuscript, but it is printed, but it has the most delightful work in it. I'd be heartbroken

02:04if someone wanted to buy it. I love sitting on some of the stock we have, and I enjoy it.

02:12Yeah, so Watkins Bookshop started 130 years ago, down on the Strand near Trafalgar Square,

02:18and moved to this location about 100 years ago, basically, and they've been doing pretty

02:24much the same sort of books, which are esoteric, occult, comparative religion, and all the sort of

02:32connected subjects around those. People who love this type of subject, they definitely

02:39know Watkins, and we are one of the three bookshops of London. Also, Treadwell's and

02:47Atlantis Bookshop, both up by the British Museum, sort of cover similar subjects, but

02:53we very much are proud of the range of our material.