Running Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop brings daily encounters with hagglers, influencers and what George Orwell once called “not quite certifiable lunatics”, according to the bestselling author and shop owner Shaun Bythell.
In an exclusive piece for the Daily Express, Bythell, who owns The Bookshop in Wigtown, lifts the lid on the quirky and sometimes bizarre realities of the trade. He notes that second-hand bookshops are quiet, calm places where time stops, and that the most scandalous events are more likely to feature in Saga Magazine than Tatler.
From Manure to Napoleon's Penis
Bythell recounts that when clearing book collections from houses, he has been offered traditional Gypsy caravans, garden gnomes, a periscope from a decommissioned submarine, several cars and six tonnes of manure. None of this, he says, can compete with the excitement at Maggs Bros in London in 1916, when a customer offered to sell the preserved penis of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Nobody has tried to sell him the severed genitals of an exiled emperor, he adds. George Orwell, who worked in a London bookshop in the 1930s, described his customers as “not quite certifiable lunatics” in his 1936 essay Bookshop Memories. Bythell says that ninety years later, very little has changed, although he is not sure Orwell ever found a dirty nappy stuffed behind a set of Arthur Ransome first editions, or a dog turd on the floor in the erotica section.
Phones, Google and Uninvited Lunches
Orwell certainly did not have to deal with mobile phones, Bythell observes. It is now common to see customers typing the title of a book they have found in the shop into Amazon. Recently, customers have asked where the café is, refusing to take his word that there is none, and pointing at their phones, assuring him that “according to Google, there’s a café in this bookshop”.
On one occasion, when he went upstairs for lunch, he found a couple sitting at his kitchen table. They had lifted a 'PRIVATE' barrier and opened a door that says PRIVATE. The table was piled high with his paperwork, including invoices and bank statements. When he entered, the husband looked up from the NHS letter containing his colonoscopy results – which he was reading – and asked what today's special was.
Hagglers and Dickensian Scenes
Alongside Orwell's “not quite certifiable lunatics”, Bythell deals with hagglers who believe he presides over an obscenely profitable empire, despite his threadbare clothes, the freezing temperature in the shop, leaking windows and a general whiff of poverty. During the summer, a customer dropped a pile of railway books on the counter and said: “I'll give you £25 for them.” When Bythell added them up, the total came to £77.
In the middle of negotiations, his children (aged seven and four) ran to the counter, barefoot, asking: “Daddy, can we have something to eat? We're starving.” Moved by this Dickensian scene, and as he was about to offer them a bowl of gruel, the customer upped his offer to £30. Bythell wishes he could say this is uncommon, but it is not.
People asking for a “bulk discount” for two books, telling him it is illegal to charge more than the marked price of 2/6 for a 1938 edition of The Observer's Book of British Birds which he is asking £3 for, or asking “What's your best price, lad?” are part of the daily grind in the trade. He bets they do not behave like that in Tesco.
The Rise of the Instagrammer
In recent years, a new species of visitor has proliferated: the Instagrammer. They often work in pairs, never say hello or ask permission, and take photos of the shop as though it serves only one purpose – to furnish them with material for their followers. Bythell says this relationship, though it feels parasitical, is not. They need the shop, and the shop needs them, as they fill the gap once occupied by paid advertising.
Bookshops, particularly second-hand bookshops, seem to be the last retail spaces with no sense of urgency – no surveillance, nor any pressure to buy. Bythell often finds people asleep in the armchairs by the fire when closing. So far, they have all woken up when prodded.
Bythell's new book, Return of the Bookseller Diarist (New Modern, £25), is published on October 8.
