Heywood Hill
This month we talk to Conal, bookseller and team leader of Subscriptions and Ultimate Literary Gifts at the prestigious and world-famous Heywood Hill, our July Bookshop of the Month. Entrenched in the shop's established history, bespoke subscription lists and building of personal libraries lies a true passion for books, old and new.
1. The “Almost as famous as 84 Charing Cross Road” Spectator quote is one we couldn’t agree with more – the shop’s history is legendary. What is it like running such a well-established and traditional bookshop in modern-day London?
Standing behind the till at Heywood Hill, one has a chandelier over-head, a framed picture of Nancy Mitford (a venerable former desk jockey during the Second World War) to the right, our room of rare books to the left, and an original William Blake print of the pilgrims of the Canterbury Tales at one’s back. The history of the shop, which hasn’t changed a great deal since it opened in 1936, is easy to feel from this position; as though one has slipped through a crack in time and emerged in a post-war Mayfair. However, descend the stairs opposite the till and we have desks from which we answer calls and emails from around the world, setting up our subscriptions, putting together personalised collections of books, and arranging for them to go out across the globe. I think the geography of the shop speaks to our general ethos. It’s important to keep the traditional shop and its accoutrements, its discernment and discretion, at the head of the business, where customers can physically meet our booksellers and see our stock of new and rare books, but to meet the challenges of modern bookselling, we have a foundation of modern services resting beneath. We also branch-out from our spot on Curzon Street to sell books at events across central London. This helps us to introduce Heywood Hill to bibliophiles drawn to London and its historic booksellers – as well as to connect with authors and publishers.
2. How do you go about handpicking your selection of new, old, and antiquarian titles?
Our selections are always customer-led. Over time we’ve built up a picture of what our customers are looking for – narrative history, nature writing, and literary detective and espionage fiction, are just a few examples of genres we know to have a proven record with us. We supplement this core stock with ‘Beautiful Books’, which are often titles you won’t find in many other shops. These comprise high-end or limited run prints, coffee-table books, and rare imported titles. We also order titles for our customers if we don’t have a copy in stock, and our subscriptions, Ultimate Literary Gifts, and Libraries are done wholly on this personalised basis; with each title picked out for the customer individually and ordered directly from our suppliers.
Amongst our shop stock is, of course, our rare collection. Andrew McGeachin runs this department and has a long history in the trade, and has built relationships with many of our customers that now informs the basis of our buying. We sell broadly, though most of our rare stock is centred on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with an especially strong showing amongst signed and first editions. We also have an eclectic array of objects and ephemera, from paintings to napkin doodles, which is a tradition begun early in the shop’s history where such objects began being sold alongside the books. We are unusual in being able to buy large numbers of out of print books in fine condition as well as rare books. People who are downsizing or looking to sell books get in touch all the time.
3. If you had to pick your absolute favourite book, what would it be, and why?
I would take the 1974 Faber edition of The Spire by William Golding. The great spire that Dean Jocelin attempts to build over his medieval flock as the foundations of his cathedral sink beneath him haunts the novel, deepening the clerical madness of the Dean, terrifying those in its shadow, and casting judgement on pride, will, and obsession alike.
4. Heywood Hill offers a prestigious list of services, the most intriguing being the ‘Ultimate Literary Gifts’ – tell us more about it and how it works.
Actually our biggest service at the moment is probably the work of our Library Department. We assemble around 25 libraries each year for corporate and private clients. This is where our unique expertise in handling new, out of print and rare material comes to the fore. Each project is entirely bespoke and often involves amplifying someone’s existing shelves on a subject to something altogether more impressive. We have tackled every subject under the sun. Recent projects have included a library on the Enlightenment in France and African exploration by Europeans for a house in New England. The work is great fun and every time we learn something new.
We also broker the sale of world-class collections of rare or out of print books, finding new private or institutional homes for existing libraries.
Our Ultimate Literary Gift is a box (or several!) of books that are personalised to the literary tastes of each customer. They come at £150, £250, £500, £1000 price-points (exclusive of postage, as we send them internationally) and can contain a mix of forms – whether it be paperbacks, hardbacks, coffee-table books, or even rare titles. Each recipient has a ‘reading consultation’ with one of our booksellers, just as with the subscriptions, where we have a conversation about reading interests, such as one’s favourite authors, areas the recipient would like to explore in their reading, and what they really dislike in books. From this discussion we build up a picture of them as a reader and begin putting together their box(es). We’re really proud of the service and have received some wonderful feedback since it launched. The books arrive wrapped in our brown paper and blue ribbon, and at the upper-end, it truly feels like a small library or burgeoning specialist collection. The consultations can be done in-person or over the phone, or simply through our website. I think this is again an aspect of our melding of traditional and modern. The personalised service, based upon a bookseller’s brain, rather than an algorithm, is mixed with the opportunity to develop customers around the world, and get them their books quickly, that modern technology and infrastructure provides.
5. And finally, are there any exciting plans coming up for the shop that you would like to share with us?
Our mission is to sell good books in innovative ways to readers and collectors worldwide. We are always exploring new ways to do just that. Our focus this year is to find new clients who really appreciate our services. We’re working on a very special project this summer which we hope to announce early in the autumn.