The Shop That Speaks Volumes

Created by Church Street community members and friends, Sally, Aya, Naz, Marie, Vitalia, Ellie, Tony, Tim, Jonathan and Chris

Archive Bookstore at 83 Bell Street

There is a bookshop that gets very close to being the museum of the Church Street area. There's an untold number of books on the forecourt everyday inviting you in. When you walk in it has that comforting feel of homely antiquity that draws you in and makes you want to stay. You have to remind yourself it is not a museum, it is a second-hand bookshop.

The Shop that speaks volumes...A hidden gem itself, offering secondhand books and sheet music dating back to the 1800s.

Archive Bookstore, 83 Bell Street, London NW1 6TB - a few minutes' walk from Marylebone or Edgware Road Stations. Conveniently situated outside the TFL congestion area. Open Monday to Saturday 10.30am to 6pm.

Interview with Tim the book seller

Church Street Community: How did you start the book shop?

Tim: We started the book shop in 1979 here on Bell Street. My wife and I - my wife Michele who is a book binder and restorer - I met her when I first went to work at an antiquarian book shop in the West End. A few months after I joined the staff she became the bookbinder there. But time keeping is not my greatest thing so I didn't stay long at that job. She carried on as their book binder. I had discovered the world of second-hand books in my early school days and later I came across London's second-hand book shops in Hampstead, Charing Cross Road, Sackville Street, Chancery Lane and the book stalls on Farringdon Road.

My wife and I started a Saturday book stall in Camden Passage in Islington. Then another book stall in Camden Lock in Camden Town as we accumulated more books from people's book collections. Then a Church Street opportunity came up in 1976 which was local to here, Alfie's market - a general antique's emporium in Church Street, and we took one of the spaces with a window. Several other book dealers took spaces there, including the Hampstead Book Corner who specialised in children's books. And in those days Church Street Market included antique dealers’ stalls in the street outside Alfie's Market, including an interesting ancient carpet stall. We carried on buying people's books. My wife carried on book binding and various friends would run the shop.

We took over Eddie Burns's book shop at 83 Bell Street in 1979. At the time there were five or six other second-hand shops including bookshops on Bell Street, this side of Lisson Street (including a book shop that had been Greer's that was on the Daventry Street corner, and then was run by Pat Cassidy, and further down towards Lisson Grove, Duly's tiny crowded book room, and Stephen Foster's interesting book shop, and a print shop run by a lady from Ely).

At that time there was a regular Saturday flea market between Lisson Street and Edgware Road where people used to take a one-off stall to empty their attics. But there were a few stalwarts, regulars who would hire a stall from the council every Saturday. Some of them worked at the local auctioneers, Phillips, which was on Lisson Grove where Tesco is now. And they would have lots of interesting general goods that hadn't sold at auction which they were able to offer on their stalls. For example, entire porcelain dinner services which might eventually be nonchalantly smashed on the ground if they didn't get the price asked. Sadly, the community did not save that flea market from extinction, when after some years the popularity of antiques subsided, and the auctioneer was bought out and closed down. Phillips had influenced the whole antique flavour of the area really, drawing many visitors including dealers and collectors. We have hung on and here we are now, the only book shop. Stephen Foster's book shop now trades vigorously in Chiswick.

Back in 79 when we first came here there were many more shops. Apart from the Lisson Gallery that has been giving life to the area since the sixties, notably there was a famous bike shop called Bell Street Bikes, and a vegetable green grocer’s shop opposite, run by a man who was closely related to Joseph von Sternberg and whose son looked exactly like him, and Mr Brown's barber shop, and Jose's Spanish cafe.

Lisson village, this village here on Bell Street immediately centred around Lisson Street, with its eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings has seen many changes, the latest being the new 'green route' to Church Street. High on the outside corner wall of the bookshop can be seen preserved the previous names of this section of Bell Street between Lisson Street and Lisson Grove. Firstly Great James Street and later Bendall Street and later still Bell Street, posing quite a research problem for anyone looking into local history and addresses (at the main Westminster library for instance).

We have a wonderful bell tower spared demolition, unlike the schoolhouse on the opposite corner. We must start a campanological campaign to bring back the bells to Bell Street.

Church Street Community: What is the story with the piano?

Tim: The piano has been here a long time. I've always liked pianos. This piano is a Barnes piano, from about 1930, and it’s overstrung and underdamped. I can't remember when, it must have been 35 years ago, we carried this small piano downstairs to the printed music dungeon. I just don't know how we got it down there. It’s several octaves short, not because they fell off but it was just made like that.

Anyone browsing the printed music is welcome to try it out on the piano. There is a regular pianist Jonathan Cohen who comes most Fridays and plays at teatime, from about 4pm. He loves the piano. Jonathan has played regularly since he first accompanied airman Barry Martin, now deceased, who had memorised the entire American songbook when he was in the RAF of which he never failed to relate that his sergeant was Tony Hancock and his drummer was Peter Sellers. Jonathan visits every Friday at teatimes in memory of Barry and for the love of the Barnes piano.

Time Loves Changes Quartet live in London with Jonathan playing piano. You can listen to more of Jonathan's music on the Jonathan Cohen Youtube channel or by popping into Archive Books shop on a Friday at teatime.

Church Street Community: What's your rarest book?

Tim: The rarest books we had they would've had something unique or irreplaceable about them, we don't have any at the moment. We sold them because that was our business. We have had a few rare books either unique or signed by the authors; Joyce's Ulysses signed by Joyce and Matisse, and Oliver Twist volumes in the original cloth, a Walt Whitman 1876, an early Ezra Pound, a 1649 newspaper with a pen drawing, Muybridge's Animal Locomotion, a Just So Stories with a jacket, a Dohnanyi manuscript score. The rarest books now I couldn’t tell you. You’d have to delve. The rarest book in a way is a unique thing - that would be the rarest book.

Church Street Community: What's the funniest thing you might have found in a book?

Tim: My wife found it and it was a hardboiled egg squashed in a book. Somebody was short of a handy bookmark and that's what they had to hand. It was used as a bookmark. And if I had it now I would pass it round, if I was giving a lecture on the subject, but I don't think we have it anymore. Somehow that egg got squashed deliberately in a book.

Church Street Community: What's another funny thing?

Tim: Well, I bought some books that belonged to George Orwell. His widow had stored them and somehow they all got sold, and I happened to buy them off another book seller, quite a lot of them. In one of those books was a tobacco wrapper and the brand of rolling tobacco was Black Beauty. I was struck by this cos it was obviously the tobacco that George Orwell rolled himself, and it was probably the only thing that I have in common with him because I used to roll that tobacco when I was at school. I would buy it on the Charing Cross Road from Smith's Snuff Shop. So that was a pretty funny thing to find in a book, George Orwell's tobacco wrapper,

Another funny thing. A man came into the shop who said he was in London for an annual general meeting of Marks and Spencer. He'd come mainly for the free lunch, and he had come on here to look through our books. After a while I realised he was going through every book to see if there were any bus tickets left behind (there is a poignancy in finding an old book mark whatever it is and there is a good reason for leaving it where it is). The idea of somebody just visiting your bookshop to see if he can get some free bus tickets, let alone a free lunch, is pretty amusing. I learnt he had tried this in several other bookshops and they'd kicked him out on the street. We tolerate anyone here up to a point. An archaeologist would intelligently ask what was the book I found the wrapper in, and do I still have it? I would add that many inscriptions and names found in books can be arresting, let alone objects, dried flowers, etc. Trench mud in an infantry man's bible for instance.

Church Street Community: What's the most interesting book you have? And of course, that's in your opinion.

Tim: Interesting is a subjective concept. But I would think the age of a thing is always interesting and another interesting thing is if a book has a story behind it. Or an association with the author. But other people might find it interesting because it has a bus ticket stuffed in it somewhere. Other people might find it interesting because it is printed upside down - you do find books that are printed upside down, I suppose that would be in the category of funny books - you open it and it's all upside down. Some books are printed upside down on purpose. And you can read them from either end, and you meet in the middle, so two people could read the same book at the same time. It would be a bit like W. C. Fields and his patient in 'The Dentist Chair'.

The most interesting book we have - sometimes it can be a book that isn't signed because an author gives his signed book so often, and all the ones that turn up on the market are signed, and somebody might find it interesting that it isn't signed - and it can be the more valuable one because it is rarer.

Many bindings are unique to the book binder. Many published bindings are also interesting as you are bound to discover. For instance, a small book on cricket published in 1890 with boards that look and feel like cricket-pads.

I leave it to the individual customer to find the most interesting book. It’s highly subjective.

We have some 17th century books. Some haven't got all the pages that they need. There is a book on swimming of the 1700s. We have violin making books. We have some interesting illustrated books - all different kinds of illustrations from every age. But not a lot of people come and look at these older books, as those people's interest lies elsewhere.

Often the most interesting books to a bookseller turn out to be the shabbiest thing in a collection. You may find your local charity shop has only very modern shiny new books. They probably have been called out by somebody moving house, for instance, to look at a collection that was their granddad’s - books all old and shabby and they would not want it. Whereas we would like a collection that's all old and shabby and looks like it’s ready to be thrown away. Older books are more interesting to us than the shiny newer ones.

Church Street Community: What's the oldest book you have?

Tim: It's probably a religious book of about 1580. It's not particularly precious but it’s interesting to look at because it’s in its old calf binding and it’s been like that wearing the same overcoat you might say, for 400-500 years.

Church Street Community: Do you specialise in particular kind of books?

Tim: All I can say is that we specialise in second hand books, and we have a lot of printed music. So, people think we must specialise in music. Otherwise we don't specialise. If we do specialise at all we would seem to specialise for a limited period while the books we bought and the particular collection lasted. When they are all sold we wouldn’t be able to buy them again, and therefore we'd look for another collection, and we'd be specialising in that subject while it lasted. Like we had a collection of Conjuring/Legerdemain/Magic Tricks books and we couldn’t replace those once we'd sold them. We had a collection of traction engine books and we couldn’t replace those. We bought a huge collection in Wales of esoteric books from a deceased theosophist and the devil tried to blow us off the road into a ditch on our way home. And we couldn't replace those. We still regret not going back for the folk recordings. Many of the different collections of books we've bought from people who were moving house or were selling up, many of them contained special subjects difficult to replace. Our speciality is the books we've bought as long as they last.

We do have a lot of printed music books downstairs and they surround the piano, if you can get to them but not while a pianist is playing. And there is one pianist who is rather fond of that piano - like a dog with a bone.

We are fortunate to have a specialist string instrument shop (Stringers) as a neighbour in Lisson Grove. I can recommend Hobgoblin's music shop in Rathbone Place. There used to be a good brass shop in Crawford Street. There is one other specialist second hand music book shop, Travis and Emery in Cecil Court in the centre of town. There are music dealers, people who advertise on AbeBooks or Amazon, there are people who sell books on websites, but they don't have shops. A good directory with reviews of British second-hand and antiquarian bookshops can be found at thebookguide.info.

Church Street Community: What's your bestselling genre, what do people like to read the most?

Tim: Comic books probably, but we don't have many, it's the pictures they like. We have visual but not so many comic books as people would like. Most people come in for something unusual. You might say every individual has their own taste, which we are lucky if we can satisfy. You mean what sort of book sells most, day in and day out? I just couldn't put my finger on it, sorry. I haven't done the analysis. And anyway, that would be fruitless. That would be fruitless! I would say just come into the book shop and look around and see what there is. Really, it's a parallel universe, I'd say, take a leap, you'll be surprised. Each customer has their own interest. We try to cater for everyone but we can't please everyone.

Church Street Community: Some people would say this is a bit of an organised chaos - do you know every book you sell here? Or have a particular system?

Tim: Would they? Chaos can be an exciting thing to behold, I assure you it's not intentional. Ideally, you want to organise things so you can find them and most book sellers produce a catalogue. We've never done that. We have listed books that we had in, but those lists don't last, and we've never produced a catalogue. Any mathematician would tell you that chaos has its own wonderful patterns. I say to whoever asks, "are they in order?", "look and you will see beside it more of whatever you're looking at".

Nowadays to survive, they say shops need to have a presence online, which would need a catalogue. But people seem to like the shop that it offers them surprises that they can't find online, if they come in to browse, rather than looking for a particular title. It offers some chaos in the form of surprises. It's not so well organised that it’s boring. They will find the fiction in alphabetical order but they may be disappointed not to find a particular book. If they come with an open mind they could be surprised at what they find. Many customers have told us that they've come into the shop for something particular and gone away happily with something they didn't know they wanted and found they wanted it more than what they came in for in the first place.

Church Street Community: What would you say is the most important thing about running a second hand bookshop?

Tim: The most important thing about running a second hand bookshop is to make ends meet, I suppose - to pay the rent and the rates. And if you can't run it yourself, you need somebody to run it for you so you have to pay them. You have to take enough money by selling books to make sure you can afford it, that's the main thing. And in order to do that, you have to be polite to people, you have to tolerate their peccadillos.

You have to write down the sales. You have to tell the people working for you to remember to write down the sales, as we don't have a computerised till. You have to trust staff not to use their pocket as a temporary till. I have heard it happens in other shops - people don't write down the sales and they don't know what they've done in the day - and it’s not a very good way of running a shop.

It’s a good idea to make a note of what people are looking for or what they are interested in. They could be interested in bus tickets or shabby books or books that are in perfect condition in a dust jacket. Dust jackets can be beautiful individual works of art that you can collect on a modest budget.

I think the most important thing about running any shop is to be polite to people, and to have a window that's interesting. Because most of the people won't come in unless they see the window. So my window is really a window on the parallel universe and it’s not a rolled down shutter.

Mind you, quite a few people don’t see the point of books at all. In fact, less and less from what I've heard.

Church Street Community: Who is the most memorable visitor?

Tim: I presume you mean celebrities. But memorable in another way comes to mind first. One of the memorable people who visited wore a big Stetson hat and talked in a southern drawl, Texan dialect I suppose it was, and he just wanted books with the text printed in dialect, any kind. That made me more aware of authors who wanted you to know how words should be pronounced.

There was another collector who wanted "nature" books and I pointed him to the bird ornithology section. It was some while of browsing he then said he wanted Nietzsche, 'Will To Power', 'Beyond Good and Evil', not nature. We got over it.

Then there was somebody else who wanted books on dooling. And I thought it was a strange kind of folk game they played somewhere, where they threw balls onto toad stools. So I said that we don't have that particular sport but there is a sporting section. He said, "No, duelling!" In praise of dialect, I am always ready to learn. There are many angles from which to approach the subject.

Thinking of authors, Alan Sillitoe, the author of the 'Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner' wrote us a letter when he got home with a book we'd sold him, Collin's New Naturalist Series 'The Sea Shore'. (Quite a common book to most second hand book sellers). But he wrote us a letter saying how pleased he was to find that book, and that it meant so much to him. Perhaps he was so thoughtful a man he acknowledged many people in that way.

Len Deighton has visited a few times. He remembered when he was at the grammar school on the main road, Marylebone Grammar School, walking past a house in Cosway Street where the traitors would've been typing out their coded messages, their messages, to Nazi Germany.

Bob Rogers was a stalwart at Speakers’ Corner who sadly died last year of Covid. Others we remember include Celia Gore Booth of Daventry Street remarkable comedienne and mime artist. Oriental art book collector Chris Furneaux mathematics professor whose tutor had been Wittgenstein at university, and not to forget our youngest book collector Nathaniel and Jack Whitehead, local Marylebone historian.

Friend of Bob Rogers, Dunstable wordsmith Chris Kennett, always has a fresh poem to read us when he visits.

Actors: we've had some film crews over the years and notable actors. TV personalities including Dennis Norden and Ronnie Cass, they could often be seen going through our popular sheet music. Abbey Road is close by and BBC Maida Vale studios, and many characters have come in on their way to work.

Musicians: Many musicians have visited, including composers Judith Bingham, Giles Swayne, cellist Keith Harvey and Russian conductor Rostovstsev, and pianists from Collin Sell to Mark Hamelin, and Charley Watts who showed an interest in Henry Hall's jazz music and our popular music collection. Jazz trombonist Mike Pointon and insurance salesman and chronicler of strangers, Peter Rosengard, not forgetting our friend and memorable guardian of our printed music dungeon the blues guitarist Kristoffer Blegvad.

Writers: Driffield, Ian Sinclair, Tom Pickard are all writers of note who have been spotted in Bell Street back in the twentieth century. And in the last decade, writer and artist Peter Blegvad has kindly brought to our shop his students from the Royal College of Art to seriously consider the modern plight and yet bright future of the printed book.

Politicians who have browsed our books include Michael Foot, strangely on a day his house was burgled while he visited our shop. But I don't expect they took any of his books. Shirley Williams who knocked on our window very early, keen to find a present for a bookish economist.

I cannot list all the wonderful local characters with their stories of pre-war days sheltering from bombs, collecting the milk from a mechanical cow, and stories of boxing clubs.

Michele Prigent was a memorable regular visitor since we opened the shop in Church Street until the day before he died in January 2019. He always had an urgent comment on current affairs. He was a celebrated anarchist and publisher of political tracts, a historical squatter of Daventry Street and consolidating member of Seymour housing association. He used to come here every Friday and was a very jolly man. He knew a good chaos when he saw it. His father dear man had been a mechanic on the spitfires during the battle of Britain, who had jumped on the last boat that left France before the Nazis took over. One memorable local character of many we are and have been blessed with.

So the most important thing about running a second hand bookshop is to treasure your visitors, characters, as well as books.

Church Street Community: What is your personal favourite book?

Tim: My personal favourite book would be a book which my wife has bound or restored for me. I think everyone might agree their personal favourite book is one that has some memories attached to it. It's an ordinary family heirloom that reminds them of their great uncles or great grandfathers, that might be their favourite book. I've got a few favourites that remind me of people that are not here anymore - they might be diaries, a blank book filled with their drawings.

Church Street Community: What book in life has most inspired you?

Tim: I have been inspired by too many books to list. Perhaps William Blake's 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' because of its artwork that is tiny and its message that is big. Like the wren that is small and its song is loud.

So the books that I discovered in my great uncle's farm house, poems of Wordsworth, a big bible with a family tree in it, written in longhand in 1860. Books in general, books of all ages, they are fascinating objects. They are miracles of print and paper conveying human expression.

Church Street Community: Is there a book that you read multiple times that you found yourself coming back to?

Tim: The Oxford English Dictionary, Graves's 'Greek Myths', and the first 15 lines of Beowulf I can't seem to get beyond them. The different metres and rhythms of poetry are fascinating, they bring one to music and dance.

My wife and I regularly read books to each other. I would recommend reading out loud to your partner, you're sharing it with someone, and you can dramatize it, you can give the characters their voices, their special dialect, you can bring the book to life in a personal way.

Church Street Community: If there was just one book you could take home with you today, which one would you take?

Tim: I've got too many books at home to want to take any more home from my shop. But today I might take Edgar Allen Poe's Tales and Essays as I haven't read them, through some Imp of the perverse.

Church Street Community: If the city was on fire and you had to flee, and you could save only five books, what five books would you save from your shop?

Tim: Take five? 5/4 rhythm. Dave Brubeck always an inspiration and Jacques Loussier (piano jazz). I'm allowed five books? I can only carry five books? I would probably take the sales book of the shop that records the daily sales and the customers who come in, and their wants. Because I write down people who have visited, so my sales books are a kind of diary. I've got a few here still. So maybe four more shop diaries if I could find them in the 'chaos'.