Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Rolt and Aickman's Waterways Festival

  

In 1950 Robert Aickman, L.T.C.  Rolt and others organised an Inland Waterways Association Festival of Boats and Arts at Market Harborough, Leicestershire. It was a great success and is now seen as launching the revival of the canals in Britain.

To mark the 75^th anniversary of the event, the IWA are holding a commemorative Waterways Festival, ‘Harborough 75’, on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 June. It will be based at Foxton, with a cavalcade to Market Harborough, and will feature ‘historic and private boats, floating traders’, stalls and The Quorn Ukulele Orchestra (QUO).

The festival website has a piece about the 1950 event, which notes: ‘The Inland Waterways Association was formed in 1946, but it was not until the 1950 Festival of Boats and Arts, held in Market Harborough, that the campaign to save the inland waterways really became established as a national crusade. The festival is generally thought to be the tipping point of the waterways revival, triggering the mass-participation on a volunteering spirit which is still unique in the world.’

The roles of both Rolt and Aickman in the original festival are celebrated: ‘The inspiration for the event came from [the] very successful Vintage Sports Car Club rallies that had been organised by Tom Rolt, one of the founding members of the association . . .  The rally developed from being merely a boat rally into a festival of boats and arts with a range of land-based attractions – exhibitions, films, theatre productions –  a development inspired by Robert Aickman, the association’s co-founder.’

Their website also has a link to a short Pathé Newsreel of the event, full of period charm.

(Mark Valentine)

Picture: Tom Rolt steering his boat Cressy.

Finally, an Affordable Reprint of Medusa by E.H. Visiak

The British Library, in their Tales of the Weird series, has just published a reprint of E.H. Visiak's rare 1929 novel, Medusa. It is introduced by Aaron Worth, and he begins, appropriately, with the bizarre position that Medusa has come to occupy to moderns readers. Owing to hyperbolic nonsense from Karl Edward Wagner (in his infamous 1983 Twilight Zone magazine lists), most readers of Medusa in the last forty-plus years have come to the book with completely mistaken expectations. Forget them. Come to Medusa with a clean slate, and you might find some attractions that have no relation to the reputation that Wagner and others have put upon it. Forget as well the fact that E.H. Visiak was one of the few literary friends of David Lindsay, author of A Voyage to Arcturus (1920). Visiak was an idiosyncratic thinker, and though he wrote on Lindsay, he clearly didn't understand either Lindsay or his book very well. 

Visiak gave Medusa a subtitle: "A Novel of Mystery, Ecstasy and Strange Horror." And it is that indeed. It begins as a kind of Stevensonian adventure, and shifts a few times to become something other, and something larger. Embedded in the narrative are Visiak's views on childhood as a ideal state of innocence, later spoiled by human passion---which was first formulated in one of Visiak's earliest published poems: 

            The Child State Thou Hast Lost

            I think that childhood only lives,

            I think that childhood only knows

            Some glimmer of the After Light,

            Till passion dim the facet bright . . .  

 

            I think the darkness is the cell

            Of the Great Artificer,

            And storming winds his furnace blow:

            Far deeper vision thou shalt know. (1906)

As one reads Medusa, it is worth bearing in mind how this relates to the main characters.

Below is the cover of the new edition, and under that, the rear cover with a blurb and a tentacled portrait of Visiak himself (c. 1910). (The art is credited to Mag Ruhig.) 

The Green Book 25 - J Sheridan Le Fanu Rarities

  

Swan River Press have just announced the latest issue of their journal The Green Book, Writings on Irish Gothic, Supernatural and Fantastic Literature, and this time it is devoted to J Sheridan Le Fanu, offering several rarities by and about him. 

These include a rediscovered monograph memoir of the author written by his publisher, and introduced by Jim Rockhill, and an essay by Martin Voracek about a 1942 German language sequel to 'Green Tea'. There is also a completely overlooked poem by Le Fanu, and an essay by him on Chapelizod, together with a note by Albert Power about the author's association with this quarter of Dublin. Jim Rockhill also writes on 'False Ghosts and Spurious Le Fanu'. 

As ever, The Green Book is essential for any reader or scholar interested in Irish literature or the literature of the fantastic.

The Golden Age of Second-Hand Bookshops

  

In several posts, including this historical profile and this recent report, I have suggested that second-hand bookshops in Britain have, on the available evidence, not reduced in number. This is certainly the case if you include full-scale charity bookshops, but it is also broadly true if you don’t. Indeed, there are more than twice as many now as there were for most of the 20^th century.

Now to be perfectly fair to book-collectors who repine that second-hand bookshops have declined, I think they usually have in mind a certain sort of bookshop, variously described as “traditional”, “old-fashioned”, “classic”, “proper” or “real”. These will typically be privately-owned, by a solo proprietor or a duo, in or not far from the high street, and with several rooms of general stock, mostly vintage and mostly hardback.

Optional extras include piles of books on the floor, a wireless softly playing classical music, cool jazz or cricket commentary, a cat, some comfortable seats, a cellar or attic, and creaking stairs. These represent the Golden Age of the Second-Hand Bookshop.

But when was it? The answer of course is that it was in the book-collector’s youth or their university days, or at most the decade or so following. Girls, boys, film, music, were all much better then too.

The good news is that there are still second-hand bookshops just like that, quite a lot of them. And the comments of assiduous contributors to The Book Guide will tell you pretty clearly where they are. I know best those that are in the North of England, where I live, and in the Marcher Country where I often go on bookshop expeditions.

Let’s look at Cumbria, in the far North West of England. Here there is the wonderful Book Case, Carlisle, occupying the whole of a large Georgian town house, with four floors, many rooms, very wide-ranging stock, and with a café, records and art as well. You could quite easily spend a day in there. Then to the west, on the coast, there is the characterful Michael Moon’s in Whitehaven, another rambling town house with a very large stock.

Penrith has two bookshops, Beckside, opposite the parish church and the Giant’s Grave, two floors, several rooms, plenty to look at, and Withnail, small but a discerning and unusual stock. In the next town, Barry McKay at Battlebarrow, Appleby is a veteran bookseller of literary and antiquarian books, with a stock of about 5,000. 

Further south, Cartmel has the long-established Gatehouse Bookshop, with a small but distinguished offering, and Ulverston has Sutton’s, ‘an appealingly old-fashioned shop’ says arch-browser Booker T, who also notices a newly-opened high street shop at Dalton-in-Furness. Daisyroots at genteel Grange-over-Sands describes itself as a “friendly, independent family business established in 1994”.

To the east, Sedbergh has the very large Westwood Books in the old cinema. In the Lakes, Keswick Bookshop is described by a recent visitor as having “the delights of a REAL bookshop”.

Well, there’s eleven bookshops in one (former) county that ought to meet any Golden Ager’s criteria, and that’s in one of the least populous places in the country. It does, however, attract many visitors, and I suspect that is part of the secret of surviving second-hand bookshops now. You ideally need both loyal local customers, and a thriving holiday trade. The places in Britain that don't have a second-hand bookshop tend to be – how shall I put it? – places without many other attractions either.

But this First Eleven, to use a cricketing term, are not the only players in the Cumbrian second-hand bookshop field. There is a Second Eleven too. They might not quite live up to the superb professional standards of the top team, but they do offer some similar qualities. And after all there were various types and standards of bookshop even in the glory years.

In Cumbria there are also two veteran bookdealers with shops open by appointment, a tourist information centre with stock from over a dozen professional book-dealers, a new bookshop with some second-hand stock, a museum bookshop and an art gallery bookshop, two antiques centres and a curio shop with books, and two specialists, in archaeology and botany. And that is without counting the 9 charity bookshops and a few others.

Ah but, the mischievous might think, you have chosen Cumbria because it so well-blessed with second-hand bookshops. Not so, but, in any case, I estimate that there are about 20 other counties (or equivalent) with a similar picture of around a dozen “traditional” bookshops and around a dozen others.

Some smaller counties don’t have this scale, of course, and never did (eg Rutland), the most remote don’t (eg Northumberland, though it has the splendid and huge Barter Books at Alnwick), some city centres don’t, and there are other less well-served places. But the book collector who doesn’t mind using The Book Guide for a bit of reconnaissance and is prepared to travel will still find plenty of places where they can easily find a long weekend’s worth of browsing.

Furthermore, two developments in the last few years offer opportunities that were not there in earlier decades. The first is the emergence of hybrid places such as cafes, pubs, galleries, with books also available. Now sometimes it must be admitted the stock is fairly marginal and difficult to get at in amongst the other activities, but there are others where it is high quality and easier of access, such as the splendid 35 West in Leominster, Herefordshire, which offers great coffee and cakes and has a discerning selection of literary books (from a professional book-dealer) all along one wall.

The second development is in book barns, with very large stock. When I started collecting there were not all that many really big bookshops: the two at Hay-on-Wye, Richard Booth’s and the Cinema Bookshop, were notable and exciting precisely because they were so huge (and open longer hours). Now, however, there are several more: Aardvark in Herefordshire, for example, and the Astley Book Farm in Warwickshire, or Pendlebury’s in the Welsh hills.

Taken together with the wider variety of places selling some books, this all adds up to quite a strong range of possibilities. The population of Britain has grown considerably and the stock of second-hand books is, despite pulping and discarding, likely to be accumulative. Further education has also expanded substantially. More readers and more books are likely to lead to more bookshops. Though there are some countervailing influences, such as e-books and online booksellers, there seems to be a stubborn affection for real books and real bookshops.

The surprising news I have for melancholy book-collectors is that the Golden Age for Second-Hand Bookshops is not a chimera. It does exist. It is now.

(Mark Valentine)

Picture: Sign for Brazen Head Books, Burnham Market, Norfolk, a charming traditional bookshop.

Do Charity Bookshops Drive Out Other Second-Hand Bookshops?

Some years ago I started investigating the common belief among book-collectors that there are fewer second-hand bookshops in the UK than there used to be. As a matter of stark statistical fact, this is simply not the case.

Of course, many people will have the subjective impression that it is true, based on their own, partial, experience. They will know of bookshops that have closed, and towns or cities that had several but now have none. No-one is doubting such personal impressions.

But they are not the whole picture. The broad profile I have established, using contemporary book trade and book-collecting directories, is that there were 523 second-hand bookshops in the UK in 1955, about 600 in 1966, about 750 in 1973, about 900 in 1984 and in 1995, about 950 in 1999, and 1,140 in 2014. There are 1,282 now, in April 2025. At no point does this profile show a decrease. Even if we exclude charity bookshops, the total of all other bookshops has been stable, at about 900+, for over forty years.

Could there have been a temporary dip in between any of these periods? Possibly, but I have not seen any evidence of that, and it could only have been small and of short duration given the overall upward trend (*see note).

The main reasons given for the supposed decrease are the internet, high street rents and charity bookshops. Again, no doubt each of these has had an impact. But bricks-and-mortar booksellers can sell via the internet too, and booksellers can migrate to lower rent areas. Indeed, there is some evidence of this: there are fewer city centre bookshops and more in smaller, less expensive towns.

But what about charity bookshops? The argument here is that these get their stock and most of their staff for free, and also enjoy tax and business rate concessions. They therefore provide, the argument goes, unfair competition to privately-owned bookshops. In a recent (2 April) article, ‘The problem with Oxfam Books’, for The Spectator, Alexander Larman confidently states: ‘If you’re ever wondering why many medium-sized, even large, towns and cities in Britain don’t have second-hand bookshops any longer, the simple answer is that the Oxfam bookshops have driven them out of business.’

In fact, over 700 places in Britain do still have a second-hand bookshop, but, that aside, the argument sounds plausible, and I can think of an apparent anecdotal example. York has two Oxfam Bookshops and in recent years has lost at least six other bookshops. But in each case Oxfam was not directly cited as the cause of closure. The reasons included retirement, death, relocation, redevelopment, the economic climate, the pandemic.

What does the evidence show? The major introduction of full-scale charity bookshops in the UK began around 2000. Oxfam had opened sixty by 2003, fifteen more were announced in 2004, and by 2009 it had 130. Other charities followed, though on a much smaller scale.

The Book Guide, the online listing of second-hand bookshops, gave in August 2017 a figure for the total number of charity bookshops it recorded: 287.

However, it also gave an overall number for all bookshops: 1,187. This means that 930 in its list were not run by charities. This would include, as with all the other overall figures I’ve cited, not only “traditional” bookshops but also private bookrooms open by appointment, and antiques centres with significant book stocks, and even a few well-established market stalls.

It will be seen that the rise of charity bookshops to getting on for 300 had not on the face of it affected the number of other bookshops. There were 900+ of these in the late Nineties and still 900+ in 2017 alongside the charity bookshops. The theory that charity bookshops drove out other bookshops is not borne out by the figures in this period.

But what about the period since 2017? Well, there was not much change in the two or three following years, certainly, since The Book Guide showed broadly similar figures for those. But since then? From 2020 to now?

Charity bookshops have continued to increase. The Book Guide now lists about 150 Oxfam Bookshops, together with a further 40 of its general shops with a book room or significant stock. It also lists 11 for Amnesty, 7 for the Red Cross, 6 for Age UK, and 17 named as ‘Community Bookshops’ (there are more of these, with a variety of names). There are many others for national or local good causes.

Furthermore, The National Trust began opening second-hand bookshops at its properties in circa 2010 and in April 2025 reported on its website that it had “more than 240”. However, some of these are very small and so do not meet the Guide’s criteria, and most may only be visited after paying an admission charge to the property: The Book Guide largely omits these and so they are additional to its overall totals.

If the theory that charity bookshops drive out traditional bookshops were true, we would expect to see this major expansion lead to a clear reduction in the latter. Has it? Have other bookshops declined since 2020 as the charity bookshop sector expanded?

Again, there is no clear evidence of this. I haven’t surveyed every single bookshop in The Book Guide but I have twice carried out sampling to estimate the number of charity and community bookshops. Both times this suggested they comprise about 27% of the total. If this is broadly correct, it implies there are still about 935 other bookshops: a very similar figure to The Book Guide’s 2017 survey. The figures do not support the supposed decline in the number of conventional bookshops as charity bookshops have increased.

This analysis does not mean of course that there is no instance where a charity bookshop has had a role in influencing the closure of a private bookshop. There may well be examples, although one I saw confidently cited recently was rather refuted by the fact that the bookshop in question had not in fact closed, and is indeed still open now. But my analysis does show, I hope, that it cannot be generally or largely true.

I am well aware that this statistical evidence will not stop the story some booksellers and book-collectors (and journalists) like to tell. So, since they prefer anecdote, I’ll share one of mine. I once visited a small South Wales town where a second (privately run) second-hand bookshop had just opened. I asked the owner of the original one if this bothered him. Oh no, he said, it was good for business: more bookshops attract more visitors. The proof of that is in another Welsh town, thriving Hay-on-Wye, which has around 17 bookshops, all apparently doing well – and, incidentally, a charity bookshop too.

(Mark Valentine)

* Additional note. There is some evidence of a dip between 2019 and 2021, when The Book Guide resumed after a hiatus, and of a further dip in 2022. But this is complicated by the Guide getting back up to speed with data, and the 2020-21 pandemic lockdowns, when closures may have accelerated and visits to bookshops were curtailed. Within 18 months, once the book trade (and The Book Guide) resumed normal business, numbers rose again.to well beyond 2018 levels.