For the last three years of the Second World War, while George Heywood Hill was in the Army, Lady Anne ran the shop with the assistance of the novelist Nancy Mitford. [4] In 1949 Elizabeth Forbes, the daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, joined the staff of the store where she worked prior to her career as a journalist, music critic, and musicologist. [5] John Saumarez Smith who had joined the staff straight from Cambridge in 1965, took up the reigns as manager in 1974, a position he held for over thirty years. [6] In 1991, the shop was bought by Nancy Mitford's brother-in-law, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire. [7] Christopher Hibbert; Ben Weinreb (2008). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. pp.395–396. ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5 . Retrieved 11 July 2017. Elaine Padmore (19 November 2014). "Elizabeth Forbes: Musicologist and critic who translated librettos and wrote nearly 100 obituaries for 'The Independent' ". The Independent.

On reading Algy Cluff's first volume, Get On With It, Tom Stoppard remarked that the author's subsequent book should be titled ‘The Importance of Being Algy’ The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street (2004), published in the centenary year of the birth of the shop’s most famous former employee, Nancy Mitford, who had worked there from 1942 to 1945, consisted of correspondence between her and the shop’s founder, George Heywood Hill, during the war – and afterwards, when she lived in France but maintained a close interest in the shop until her death in 1973. Follow Alan into Chatsworth's irresistible world of visionaries, pioneers, heroes, villains and English eccentrics, and celebrate the men and women who have shaped the history of the estate over five centuries. With his passionate knowledge of both the house and gardens, as well as his long-established relationship with the Cavendish family, Alan is the perfect guide with whom to explore the Palace of the Peaks.

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handsomely bound in full red crushed morocco, boards with 5 gilt line panels, spine richly panelled and lettered in gilt. Over the years he took on a series of poorly remunerated but bookish assistants, many of whom, inspired by his traditional approach to book-selling, went on to make their own names in the independent book trade. But Buchanan turned out to be a pompous and patronising figure, whom Evelyn Waugh once described as possessing all “the concealed malice of the underdog”. Before long he and the even more malicious Mollie had succeeded in alienating both staff and customers. Hill retired in 1966 and retreated to Suffolk rather than endure the couple any longer.

These days, it is globally renowned for its library building services and highly personal yearly subscription. Holding a Royal Warrant, it is also beloved by the Queen, has an entire bookshelf dedicated to PG Wodehouse and in John Le Carre’s novels is George Smiley’s bookshop of choice.

John had a huge acquaintance and many customers became friends, including Andrew, 11th Duke of Devonshire. Their shared bookish adventures included a decade of annual pilgrimages to Chatsworth to award the Heywood Hill Literary Prize.

When Heywood Hill opened his eponymous bookshop, Nancy Mitford was not known for her writing but for her eccentric family – a cause célèbre as a result of their fevered embracing of all things Hitler, with sister Diana marrying fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosely (and later imprisoned alongside him as a danger to the king's realm). The Thirties had been difficult for Nancy. She had released a number of books that received neither acclaim nor sales, but caused much controversy within her inner circle, particularly Wigs on the Green – a savage satire of her family’s enthusiasm for fascism. Robin Birley is a unique and wonderful Mayfair figure who whose family have been Heywood Hill supporters for generations,” Dunne says of one of London’s most admired—and socially connected—entrepreneurs. Birley’s late father, Mark, was the founder of the club Annabel’s, itself named for Birley’s alluring mother Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, a marquess’s daughter who famously went on to wed financier Sir James Goldsmith. His grandfather Sir Oswald Birley was one of high society’s most celebrated portraitists in the first half of the 20th century, and his father’s sister was Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent’s right-hand woman. As for Birley himself, like his father, he is an connoisseur of art and antiques who has founded a handful of admired private clubs, among them 5 Hertford Street, where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly had their first date, and Oswald’s, an elegant wine club that opened last year. He’s presently eyeing clubbable outposts in New York City.Throughout his lifetime John devoted his considerable intellectual energies to sifting the literary wheat from the chaff, in search of the beautiful, the important or the plain enjoyable. With her new found success, Nancy moved to Paris, but remained connected with Heywood Hill. They exchanged hundreds of letters of correspondence, with Mitford constantly gossiping about the literary world she now commanded, while Heywood Hill kept her updated on the ups and downs of running a bookshop in post-war London. Until her death from lymphoma in 1973, Nancy would always make time to visit the shop whenever she came to the city.

He also sold a set of Winston Churchill’s four-volume life of his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, written in the 1930s, that had once resided at Windsor Castle. The first volume was inscribed by Churchill to “the Prince of Wales”; the second to “HRH Prince of Wales”; the third to “King Edward”, and the fourth to “the Duke of Windsor”. In 1947 the family returned to Britain, William Saumarez Smith becoming involved in church administration, latterly as appointments secretary to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Heywood Hill is a bookshop at 10 Curzon Street in the Mayfair district of London. [1] History [ edit ] John is survived by his devoted wife and their two talented sons. We send sincere condolences to them all. At Heywood Hill we salute John for his unstinting tenure at our helm, and the indelible mark he has left on the place. From Winchester, where he was a scholar, John Saumarez Smith read Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. Before going up, thinking that he might like to go into publishing, he took a temporary job in the science department of the Cambridge bookshop Heffers.Located in a snug Georgian townhouse, Heywood Will was close to the St James’s Club, a private gentleman’s club mostly home to authors and diplomats (including one Ian Fleming) who were dazzled by Nancy's charm. She wrote that her customers loved standing “bosom to bosom” with her. Some would buy books, some would just want to flirt with a Mitford sister; either way it brought attention to the shop at a time where every sale mattered. He joined Heywood Hill as an assistant to the splendidly named Handasyde (“Handy”) Buchanan, who had been taken on as a partner in 1945 by the shop’s founder, a gentle, bookish old Etonian. Buchanan had previously worked for another antiquarian bookshop in Curzon Street which had been bombed out; his wife Mollie was already working in Heywood Hill in charge of accounts. The shop was opened by George Heywood Hill on 3 August 1936, with the help of Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy, who would later become his wife. [2] [3] One day a student rushed in and explained that he had just come from a wonderful lecture and urgently needed a copy of a book entitled The Phytosociology and Ecology of Cryptogamic Epiphytes. Saumarez Smith established that it was published by John Wiley, cost 63 shillings, and would be there in two weeks’ time. A few minutes later another equally breathless student came in, looking “for a book called …”