Bill Samuel - An Accidental Bookseller: A Personal Memoir of Foyles

AN ACCIDENTAL BOOKSELLER

A Personal Memoir of Foyles

Bill Samuel

For many years I lived in India, and one of the highlights of my visits to London was the moment I stepped into Foyles. It was the closest feeling I could remember to having sixpence to spend in a sweetie-shop, a place with more books than I could imagine under one roof. I knew I would find the one I was after and many more I didnt know I needed. (Maybe I am imagining this, but I think there were so many books they jostled off the shelves and came right out on to the street to waylay the reader). On rainy days it was the perfect place to be, in the warren of aisles where the books breathed and ruffled their pages. I spent hours browsing, because I couldnt afford all the ones I wanted, but no-one seemed to mind and Foyles knew books dont get used up by being read. The day I found my own book of poems on the shelf was one of the best days of my life. I still walk into Foyles and turn my front covers to face the world. I suppose the staff just sigh and put them back, knowing another vandal poet has been in.

Imtiaz Dharker

I have very fond memories of Foyles. I remember it was one of my first ports of call when I moved to London in 1987, no job, nowhere to live and the grand total of 12 in my pocket. I remember the old system of paying for a book and receiving a ticket, which you had to take to another desk to collect your purchase. I would have liked to have applied for a job there but was too intimidated by somewhere that seemed unreachably grand and famous a place for the likes of me. Having not a penny to my name in my early days in London (I lived in a squat and worked as a part-time secretary), I could rarely afford to buy books anyway, but spent many a happy hour browsing and getting lost in what seemed to be endless nooks and crannies.

I also remember it moving to its current premises - I went to the opening party as a published author and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Stanley Tucci. I've bought books there, done events there - and it has a special place in my heart as one of the last places I visited with my great friend Andrea Levy, who died in February this year.

Louise Doughty

I was based in the West End in the early eighties, when Foyles was at its eccentric finest, with a truly freestyle selection of books and an anachronistic method of payment that required sturdy shoes and a fine sense of direction. The bookstore also had an excellent history section, the stock ordered, I supposed, by a history professor with more than a passing taste for things military. I was on a meagre salary at the time - barely 70 a week - so the 21 cover price of an excellent book on the Desert Campaign of WW2 was well outside my pocket. This being Foyles, however, where oddball behaviour was not shunned but actively encouraged, I opted to read the book during successive lunchtimes while perched on a pile of remaindered Churchill biographies. No-one seemed the least put out and I carried on like this for a week. Alas, my carefully laid plan was scuppered when some unbelievable rotter bought the book I was reading, so I never did find out how the Desert Campaign ended. If anyone knows, a postcard with the final score written theron would be most welcome.

There are bookshops - and then there is Foyles.'

Jasper Fforde

In the 1970s, entering Foyles was like returning to a huge version of the bookshops of my childhood, in Colombo: a mysterious, perplexing, arcane repository of the unexpected.

But my best memory is from 2006. The shop had been transformed: locatable books, jazz and coffee, an events space. Upstairs an exhibition of Sri Lankan books had been organised and I did a reading at the opening. The political scene in Sri Lanka was tense, but perhaps those multiple stories of books buoyed us all. Conversations bubbled and led to the development of two new literary festivals: one at Asia House in London, and the other in Galle, Sri Lanka. Both still going, and much needed, as I hope Foyles will keep going to feed the needs of readers whatever the challenges ahead.

Romesh Gunesekera

The first time I heard about Foyles was early in the 1960s when I was a teenager at Charterhouse, and a young aspiring writer, and my English teacher told me that during WW2, Christina Foyle had lined the roof of the bookstore with copies of Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf. I just loved this story - it really touched something in me - and I so hoped it was true - and subsequently found it was! Then two decades later as a published but very much midlist author, I used to read about the legendary literary lunches and dream that one day I would be invited to one. Sadly my rise from the midlist came too late. But at least one dream had come true - to see my books on their hallowed shelves. For me the name Foyles will forever signify so much that is wonderful about the world of books. Humour, defiance, courage and the endless riches that the printed page bestows upon humankind.

Peter James

Amid all the algorithms and cookies, the metadata and SEO, Foyles has steadfastly continued doing what it has always done so well: introducing brilliant books to readers of all ages and all backgrounds. Long may it continue.

Clare Mackintosh

Ive loved Foyles since reading about it in other peoples books. In Not That Sort of Girl by Mary Wesley, Rose consults a sex manual in the lavatory in Foyles. I was still living in a village in Yorkshire then and it seemed the height of glamour. When I moved to London it was a delight to go and browse the actual shelves and it is still one of my favourite things to lose myself without objective and come out with a couple of hours later with a book I didnt know I wanted. I was once asked out in the foreign languages department and have had many happy hours chatting or people watching in the cafes in both the old and new buildings. It is a joy to interview authors there as the space is so welcoming, the booksellers so efficient, and the audiences so keen. Foyles truly is an oasis, a good deed in a naughty world, a beacon of hope and all that is good.

Cathy Rentzenbrink

When I met Bill I found a friend who was deeply committed to human rights. He understood the importance of denouncing social injustices through the medium of social documentary photography and supported a number of exhibitions of my work in Foyles Gallery and the launch of my poetry book, Oranges in Times of Moon, in 2006.

Bill and Foyles had the courage to show an exhibition which challenged the perception of the people of Iraq disseminated by the media. Iraq: The People, launched a few days before the allied invasion of Iraq in March 2003, revealed a people living together in a peaceful society who were suffering the consequences of twelve years of economic sanctions imposed by the west.

I know that the exhibitions had an impact on the public from the feedback we received and played a part in changing perceptions on the causes of global poverty.

Carlos Reyes Manzo

When I was a little girl my biggest treat during the Christmas holidays was a trip to Foyles Bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. I was allowed to select my Christmas present book in the Childrens Section. We had a W.H. Smiths back home in Kingston-on-Thames but even at the age of seven I knew perfectly well that Foyles was the real deal, the King of all the bookshops in the country.

I spent a long time browsing the bookshelves because choosing was part of the treat. I was ages wondering whether I wanted another Faraway Tree book or a Mary Poppins or the latest Noel Streatfeild. When I eventually unwrapped my choice on Christmas Day the little green book sticker saying Foyles inside the cover was definitely part of the thrill.

As I got older I loved the large second-hand book section. It was such a joy to read a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard and then discover pristine first editions on the second-hand shelves, all at half price.