Crimes Against Literature

I read with much amusement that the Home Office's Top Tackdog, Doctor John Reid, plans to ban convicted criminals from publishing the memoirs of their exploits. He intends to trackfast this legislation too, so watch out!

This comes as a classic redtop-led kneejerk response to recent rumours that paramilitary murderers, released into the community by the Good Friday Agreement, have been paid substantial cash advances by UK publishers.

So it isn't [honestly, guv] about winding up disgraced tories Jeffery Archer and Jonathan Aitken, although clearly there will be no tears shed at the Politburo if those two perjurers are stripped of their royalties. It's about stopping some very nasty criminals from benefitting financially from their crimes.

The most prevalent UK publisher of hard-man autobiographies is John Blake. I've read some of their stuff, Guvnor, Pretty Boy, Chopper and Bronson; it's not very edifying, but it does sell well south of the river. What's more, it is in general written by men who have served their sentence and been released. And whether we like it or not, and read it or not, they should be free to ply their wares, shouldn't they?

The task of codifying this legislation will be a nightmare. Will it be retrospective; and if so will there be a rule of limitation? Will booksellers run the risk of imprisonment for selling a copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol? Or Papillon? Or Jimmy Boyle's A Sense of Freedom?

Mishmash Bookshop suggested some time ago to friends of ours at 'the Yard' that the Metropolitan Police should have a literary division. A few coppers could sit around on an overstuffed leather banquette, cross-referencing charge sheets with galley proofs from this month's violent bestseller. If the subject claims to have 'blagged' a bank robbery that remains unsolved, the response is only a phonecall away.

Or perhaps we could 'come to an arrangement' with the various firms to extend the 'East End Omerta' to cover the West End publishers.

Andrew Mishmash

Help! Help! Help!

Regular reader and occasional contributor Mr W has quite a problem on his hands - he is, if stories are to be believed, personally responsible for almost all of the current IT boom in Scotland's youth.

That's not the problem tho' - he desperately needs a fan to replace the broken one on his Dell Dimension 8100. And Dell can't - or, we secretly suspect, won't - help him. A most unfortunate Mr W, then.

So if anyone reading this has either a spare fan, or a Dimension 8100 with a "frazzled front end" and a working fan, lying about the place, do please give him a call.

More of the usual half-baked opinionated nonsense coming later.

Andrew Mishmash

That's Greenock Mean Time!

I have just heard on the news that the Local Government Association - and here I'm assuming that's the LGA for the generic Englandandwales - have reported that the return from British Summer Time [BST] to Greenwich Mean Time [GMT] at the end of the summer is directly responsible for the deaths of some 450 people, mostly killed in car accidents during the evening rush hour.

They have suggested that the United Kingdom should stay on BST through the autumn and winter, and go to BST-plus-one in the spring. Meaning that England and Wales would go onto Central European Time [CET], and always be one hour ahead of GMT.

They propose that there should be a three-year experiment to evaluate the comparative benefits of the scheme. This experiment was tried before between 1968-71, and resulted, according to ROSPA, in the deaths of 2500 people per year.

Any plan to put the whole of the UK onto CET means that Scotland, especially the fine northern parts thereof, would be plunged into darkness until lunchtime for half the year. Of course as a dyed-in the-harris-tweed Nationalist I don't have a problem with my country deciding on its own practical time zone; in fact I'm pleased when politcs allows us to consolidate our differences. But it would be a practical nightmare for the good citizens of Berwick, or St. Abbs, or Dumfries.

These kinds of arguments get kicked around almost every weekend the clocks change; largely because news is quieter at weekends and lobby groups post their reports then to improve their audibility.

But surely - joking apart - you couldn't have Greenwich Mean Time that never applied in Greenwich!

Andrew Mishmash

PS I have just remembered that HM Forces need not be concerned with this pettyfoggery as all operations anywhere in the world are conducted on GMT - militarily known as Zulu Time. But you knew that, Andy McNabb fans, didn't you?

King of Kennington?

My favourite film of all time is City Lights by Charles Chaplin. I have seen it dozens of times and still dissolve in floods of tears when the Flower Girl realises that the Tramp.... well, this isn't a spoiler site, so see it for yourself.

When Jean-Luc Godard - a film director I won't call accessible - said "film is a footnote to Chaplin" it was City Lights he was talking about. Chaplin did it all; wrote it, directed it, acted, designed the gags, and bedded most of his leading ladies. In doing so he invented much of the cinematic grammar that still applies today, like lap-fading, establishing shots, and crossing the line. And all before tea-time.

I read Chaplins autobiography many years ago, and didn't really like it. But now, living in Camberwell, and having a bit more experience of mortal and financial highs and lows, I'm profoundly moved by the opening chapters. The constant grinding poverty that Chaplin, his brother, and their mother suffer is horrifying, and not all three of them survive it.

Unfortunatley, at the point where Chaplin goes to America and starts to make some money, he gives up on the abuse-lit horrors [and who can blame him] and therafter delivers a blow-by-blow account of how charming everyone he meets is, how well his films sell, and how much money he is earning.

This weekend I think I might go out and about to see if I can find the garrets, workhouses, and factories in which the fons et origo of cinema grew up; pictures to follow if I can find them.

Vincent van Gogh lived a couple of hundred yards from our garret too, and I might well make a similar pilgrimage of his sites next - springtime trip to Arles anyone?

Andrew Mishmash

The Last Post by Max Arthur

The Metropolitan Police Military History Society [of which Mishmash Bookshop is a cheerful member] had a very interesting visit from the war historian Max Arthur earlier this week. Max read from, and talked about, his book The Last Post, which came out in paperback recently.

The Last Post is a collection of interviews with veterans of the First World War. At the outset there were twenty-one of them, and during the writing of this book, sadly, seventeen of them died. Of the four now remaining alive, only one saw active service. It is as Max says, a conscious effort to record their histories before it's too late.

I have been a great fan of Max’s Lost Voices series for a number of years. I think his hands-off and transparent style suits the subject matter - the day to day mundane nature of life on military duty, interrupted by short periods of terrifying violence and often by death.

Max contributes almost nothing written to the books himself; but he clearly brings two very great skills to his publications. Firstly, he must be an extremely good interviewer. He spoke about this towards the end of his talk, and revealed his secret technique - "ask about their childhood, and then just let them talk, and hold their hand as you listen".

Secondly, he is very obviously a discriminating editor. One of the problems with academic history is that it treats all facts as equally important; but the lay reader wants something more narrative, that will convey the peaks and troughs. Once he has the raw material, Max knows which of Tommy Atkins' tales will shock you, which joke will amuse, and which will bring on tears of empathy or of regret.

Max is a very entertaining reader [no doubt deriving to a great extent from his earlier fame as an actor] and brings a vitality to the words that cannot come from the page alone. It was useful too to have his brief descriptions of the interview scenarios that you don't get in the books; like one of his respondents sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, and wearing a tricorn hat.

Last year the last surviving Australian soldier of the First World War died; the news was carried on the front pages of all the national newspapers. I hope ours are respectful enough to do the same.

Andrew Mishmash

Trouble at t' Mill...

Some of you may have seen the sad news over the weekend the Terry Jones has been getting treatment for cancer. Apparently the treatment has gone well and he is recovering. Jolly Good.

Jones, you will recall, directed the Monty Python movies Holy Grail, Life of Brian and Meaning of Life ; and later developed a career as a serious [well, serious for a Python] TV historian. The requirement that all television historians should have a 'trademark silly walk' allowed Jones the opportunity to walk with the aid of a cane, much in the manner of Sir Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park.

The sharper-eyed newshounds among you will have noticed that Jones' bedside vigil was being kept by his "pretty blonde 21-year old swedish girlfriend". Said the Mirror.

Mishmash say;

Jonesy - well played, not bad for a boy from Colwyn Bay, isn't it!

Gentlemen of the Press - you just can't help yourselves, can you?

Andrew Mishmash

Red and Yellow and Pink and Green...

When I'm not hard at work in Mishmash Bookshop, I retire to live in the beautiful south London village of Camberwell.

One of the many truly astonishing things about Camberwell is the quality of it's rainbows.

During this afternoon's heavy showers, followed by sunshine, I knew we would be in for a treat, and I wasn't disappointed. The shot above is from last year, and doesn't do them justice. It was taken looking east, over the village, from Myatts Field Park.

Now, I was educated in Scotland in the 1970's, so I know what a rainbow is. They are caused by sunlight is being marginally refracted through the water vapour in the air. The reason you can see 'twin' rainbows in the best examples is that the refraction is happening in a converging pattern towards you, and the slower red light bends into the centre. So that box is ticked.

But my question is - Why, after a fair amount of rural life, and a lot of mountaineeering both in Scotland and abroad, does Camberwell have the most vibrant rainbows I have ever seen, and the most regular occurance of the twin rainbow?

I have thought long and hard about the effects of poor air quality, the temperature, the southern boundary of the long-gone Thames flood; but I just can't figure it out. So can anyone either explain this phenomena, or at least point me towards any historical resourse that will confirm it?

I will buy the most convincing respondent a pint in Camberwell's fantabulous Sun and Doves.

Andrew Mishmash

Shut Up! Damn! Already!

Walking past the newspaper stand this morning I saw the headline on the Times - Prince in bid to save Briton on Death Row.

For a moment I thought [as perhaps you just have] that the royal personage in question was His Purpleness, The Minneapolis Midget, Prince Rogers Nelson.

No such luck. The poor sod on Death Row [always capitalised, like a residential address] will probably go to his grave having just been asked what he does and how far he has come today by everyone's favourite socially awkward posh bloke, with a different name for use in each country he owns.

If I was on Death Row - and hey, these things happen overseas - I would want Brian Blessed speaking up for me, in character, as Vultan, Prince of the Hawkmen from 1980's camp movie classic Flash Gordon.

Or Stephen Berkoff, as Brian Blessed, as Prince Vultan.

Andrew Mishmash

Le plus ca change...

We note here at Mishmash Bookshop that the fragrant Louise Bagshawe has been selected via the notorious Conservative Central Office ‘A-list’ system to be the prospective candidate for Corby. Conservative Central Office is less than fifty yards from the front of our shop – start to feel like the world is getting smaller? And it is above a Starbuck’s – claustrophobic?

Prior to winning Tory X-Factor Ms Bagshawe was a writer of racy romantic fiction for modern girls – ‘chick lit’ as it is known in the biz. And because her successes in this project were not all that her publisher had expected, all of her titles have been remaindered, and we sell them by the bucketload. Especially to gay men for some reason.

But this is the second time in Mishmash's short and chequered career that I have fallen back on selling the early literary slush of a politician more famous for being infamous, than for representing their constituents.

In the mid ‘90’s the top-selling book in our Glasgow remainder bookshop was Helen Liddell’s Elite. Ms Liddell [almost always referred to as ‘Stalin’s Granny’] had just started out on her car crash of a political career and was none too pleased with us when we started promoting the literary failures of her past; I vaguely recall a lawyer’s letter landing on our MD.

I think Ms Liddell eventually ran out of friends to the extent that she was posted to Australia to act as High Commissioner; a kind of political transportation, but not, sadly, for the term of her natural life. Perhaps, since each of her official incumbencies seemed to coincide with the abolition of said offices, the Aussies thought her appointment might accelerate their eventual independence.

The trick to this – I humbly submit – is to make it as a politician, whatever that involves, before you engage in the ‘evening and weekends’ profession of scribing under-performing fiction. Ms Widdecombe and Ms Currie will no doubt leap to back me up here. Of course their work, too, was remaindered – it’s appallingly written – but the advances from the gullible publishers are so, so much bigger, darling!

Have a literary weekend – I’m off out with the Wee Guy.

Andrew Mishmash

We're Nearly Famous Now!

Victoria is a funny old locale for bookselling [and I pause here to allow those of you who live 'off' to raise a brow to our St James's Park address, but it’s really the same place]. At first it seems a bit barren; but on close inspection, and with a bit of judicious gerrymandering, it's actually quite productive. Literally speaking.

Iain Dale started Politico's just round the corner, and last time I lifted the lid it looked like he was creating a Tory TV channel and becoming a web based media baron.

Random House aren't so far away that you couldn't go round there and make inappropriate comments at them during your lunch hour.

And just across Victoria Street from Mishmash Bookshop is the delightful Friday Project [whom I here pause to emphasise are nothing at all to do with the execrable after-hours bilge that is TV’s Friday Night Project].

The Friday Project is a small, funky, blogfan type publisher that looks to utilise the best emerging technologies like the internet, podcasts, e-books, that sort of thing, to run alongside print media. Most famous for employing Scott Pack, the erstwhile “most powerful man in British bookselling” [sorry Scott but it could be worse; “real name Katie Price” for instance] TFP was actually up and running for a while before he joined them a couple of months ago, bringing them more into the reading public’s gaze.

They have got a very good website too, with three very informative and entertaining blogs; Scott P's very own Me and My Big Mouth, The Friday Thing and London by London. Of course everyone in bookselling reads MMBM every day, despite Scott’s recent protestations. TFT is just coruscatingly rude about pretty much everyone, and LBL is a fantastic hotch-potch of opinions and ideas from just about everyone left standing in London.

Last week they picked Mishmash Bookshop for their Intermezzo Londoner interview bit – boy was I surprised. In amongst the entry level celebrity glitterati, you can understand our flattered glee. You can have a read of LBL's latest issue here. Then take a look at the other Friday Project stuff. And next time you are in Victoria [or at least the St James’s Park end] pop into Mishmash Bookshop and buy a book or two.

Routemaster Bus Sale!

As you know, Mishmash Bookshop's home is on the ground floor of Transport for London's headquarters building. Consequently we spend a fair amount of time chatting to the various boffins visiting 'from upstairs'. And what a nice bunch they are too, generally.

About two years ago rumours started circulating that the world-famous Routemaster buses were to be finally and irretrievably decommissioned. And when the noise of weepin' and wailin' settled, one of my friends at TfL gave me the contact details to buy one - "change out of three grand" he said. Sounds like a bargain!

Now, the cloakroom girl at my favourite style-bar, who used to be Hell's Angel Property in New Jersey [and you don't skimp on her tip], said all the patches used to buy decommissioned police Harley D's two at a time so you could cannibalise them. Or Frankenstein them. Dude, whatever.

So we thought about buying a pair, cut-and-shut them, kitting the result out as a rolling bookshop, and taking it round book-free bits of London on a huge grant from Bookstart, followed by a summer tour of the West of Scotland, Cliff Richard style. Sadly 'tho, we realised that, living in London, it would cost a king's ransom to stable them for January and February. I even suggested to my sister that she could have the grooviest greenhouse in all Falkirk, but she was having none of it. Too bad - we'll just have to stay static in St. James's Park Station.

But while we were researching the possible changeover to bookselling by bus, we discovered the following amazing facts;

1. Strictly speaking, Routemasters are only those buses entering service from summer 1959 - spring 1968.
2. All the windows are the same size, thereby effecting much speedier repairs.
3. You don't need a PSV licence to drive one [as a mobile bookshop]. Or for that matter an HGV licence.
4. The brakes were left over from RAF Halifax bombers from WW2. Which is why you used to get thrown forward every time the driver slowed down.
5. Routemasters don't have a chassis - an astonishing innovation in the 50's
6. The last Routemaster ran on 9th December 2005, on route 159 from Streatham Hill to Marble Arch via Westminster. I was on it and can report it was uncomfortably slow and stuffy, and everyone’s damp coats smelled of mothballs. Lovely.

You have my full permission to recycle these trivia jewels as your own; but beware any groups of associates who might feel the repetition thereof lowers you in their estimation. But for those of you genuinely interested in the history of London Buses [and not just the Routemaster] I should point out that we are down to our last few dozen copies of John Reed's classic book [see top], and it's still only £2. Once it's gone, as they say, rather tautologously, it's gone.

So get down to Mishmash Bookshop as soon as you can – “Hold tight please!”

Andrew Mishmash

...and no "Enter Sandman" either...

I’m sad to see the NMPA and the MPA have recently written to the lovely Olga to tell her to leave and desist from leading so many young men [and Dads] astray.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Essentially the music publishing biz [or the sorry bunch of lawyers who effectively run it] is moving to close down ‘tab’ sites in much the same way as they have tried to close mp3 sharing sites in the past. Olga is the biggest of these ‘tab’ sites. ‘Tab’ is short for tablature, which is a kind of comic-strip chord notation for the musically illiterate. By which I mean non-reading, as opposed to just lacking in taste….

This news comes hard on the heels of a recent report that sales of entry level guitars like Squire, second hand classics like Telecasters and Les Pauls, and costly investment items like Gretsch and older Fenders are all going through the roof.

To a large extent this is because the guitar is back in fashion for pop music and the kids are lovin’ it - Kaiser Chiefs, Artic Monkeys, Arcade Fire etc have seen to that. But a substantial part of the increase in guitar and amp sales is to the kind of middle aged dads [not using the word crisis here] who twenty years ago would have bought a gas guzzling sports car, hit the golf course, or joined the Masonic lodge. Now they get that Rickenbacker semi they always wanted and learn to play ‘Hey! Mr Tambourine Man’ from – you guessed it – a tab site.

Now there are arguments either way about the rights and wrongs of tab sharing sites; take a look at the comments on the BBC report and you’ll see what I mean. Essentially the publisher’s argument is that distributing free tabs decreases the potential income of the artist; which, on the surface, seems fair.

But tab sheets are almost useless without a recording of the original as a reference, so it should go without saying that any would-be Jimmy Page will have that in his walkman or iPod. And the tab user would never have bought the sheet music anyway; tabs, remember, are for people who can’t read music. So it looks like the lost income argument is flawed, at best.

Like many businesses, the music publishers clients [the artists] are distinct from their customers [you and me], and therefore have different agenda. But in these days when in practice there are really only three or four entertainment companies, it strikes me that the publishers should see themselves as part of a bigger picture. Pearson Media or Bertelsmann surely know that if I download the tabs for Stairway to Heaven then it’s likely I’ve already got the guitar and t-shirt to match; where their music publishing loses out, their guitar sales and online service provider stands to gain, perhaps by a healthy margin.

Meanwhile, those of you out there with teenage guitar heroes [even middle aged teenage guitar heroes] living in the loft, you might find yourself hearing a lot more amateurish racket than you have been!

Andrew "Blackmore" Mishmash

Blogger's Special Discount Offer!

Just a quick post today to say how astonished we have been at the response to the blog. It's been fantastic when our regulars come in to say they've been dropping in on it and making helpful comments.

As a big "THANK YOU!" to all of you who are following the blog [i.e. you!] we are offering a further 10% discount on all paperbacks, childrens titles, and hardbacks too - in fact everything in the shop.

Just come in, choose your books, and say to the handsome bloke behind the till that you've "been blogging" and claim your extra discount!

[A small favour tho - please do ask before we ring them through or my accountant gets huffy!]

So come one, come all, and bring all your friends too. Mishmash Bookshop is big enough for all of us - I hope!

Andrew Mishmash

Spectacular Childrens Illustrated Book Sale!

As any parent can tell you, the quality of children’s publishing has improved immeasurably in the past few years. This is not only true of older childrens books like Harry Potter, Alex Rider, and the Northern Lights trilogy; the change is even more remarkable in illustrated titles for the under-fives. So no more Janet and John and the Blue Peter annual - we here at Mishmash Bookshop prefer to spend our time catching up on the latest adventures of the Nutbrown Hares, Maisy Mouse, or Chimp and Zee.

We’ve just taken delivery of a load of fantastic young children’s illustrated titles; mostly from our favourite kids’ publisher Walker Books, and also some from Myriad, Bloomsbury, and others.

We tend to stick to Walker for our children’s section as no-one else has their consistent high standards both in terms of their appeal to young readers, and also in terms of their production quality. They seem to have a real skill for matching writers to illustrators, resulting in beautifully balanced books that will give continued reading pleasure for years.

So we now have dozens of full colour titles in stock by Kim Lewes, Joyce Dunbar, Charlotte Voake, Anita Jeram, Shirley Hughes, Martin Wadell, Debi Gliori, and the Wee Guy’s personal favourite Jez Alborough.

And at this point of course we should remind you that [as you know from reading our last post] our Successful Summer Sale has been extended for a further two weeks [or so] and all the new children’s stock is flying off the shelves at a smile-inducing £2!

And so with no more ado I should say to you its time to get on down to Mishmash. The Bookshop. In St. James’s Park station.

We look forward to welcoming you [and your cheeky ankle-biters] soon!

In The Future Everything Will Be Smaller. And Digital!

It has been drawn to our attention that there have been a number of complaints about the Mishmash Bookshop Weblog; specifically that it has largely been about topics other than bookselling. And we admit that it has up until now been little more than a convenient outlet for witless half-baked opinions on brutalist architecture and kids telly. But this will change!

Our long-term plan for the blog - [and its still anyone’s guess what the long term is in IT] - is to have twice weekly posts delivering news about the shop, review some new titles we have in, let you know about upcoming promotions, some charts, leak rumours from the trade rags, maybe an online book club..... Always spiced up with our immoderate opinions on life in London, what’s wrong in the world, and 80's culture. Ambitious? Yes, but first, as 'Laughing' Lenny Cohen said, we take Manhattan.

And with this plan clearly at the front of our tiny but fecund minds, we will make the next post about the huge delivery of illustrated children’s titles that have just arrived in the shop. That’s Mishmash Bookshop. In St. James’s Park Station.

Summer Sale Extended!

Usually the August Bank Holiday bookends [see what I just did there?] the summer season and each of us will have personal touchstones that we use to celebrate it; The Charity Sheild match, oysters to start every meal, Notting Hill Carnival... And of course all retailers' heads turn towards the run-up to Christmas. But we don't care about any of that!

Mishmash Bookshop are very pleased to announce that we will be continuing our hugely successful Summer Sale for another two weeks!

We just feel that there may be lots of you out there in Westminster who [despite my twice-a-day leafletting and three months to call in!] havent yet taken the opportunity to drop in and get yourself something for only £2 from our huge selection of paperbacks and childrens illustrated titles. And indeed it might be just the right time to start squirrelling stuff away for Christmas. Piles of it in fact....

So spread the word; don't keep such good news to yourselves. We look forward to welcoming you soon.

Andrew Mishmash

Apart from books ....there's always beer!

Japanese Animated Movies

So I took the Wee Guy to see Howl's Moving Castle at the weekend - remember he is three and a half and it's two hours long - and he enjoyed it immensely. He really loved Spirtited Away too, when we watched it at home on DVD awhile back.

But I'm afraid I just don't get japanese animated films. They seem to be entirely made up of middle, and the opening scenes and denouement are really just there to bookend the random linear narrative structure. So I just think "Is that it?" Or is it supposed to be simply about the skill and beauty of the drawings?

I know there are films that very famously only have a middle - Reservoir Dogs for instance - and I'm not saying I like them any the less for it, but I find it hard to take that kind of spin on animation. Give me Belleville Rendezvous anyday - and it's about cycling too.

I'm also struck that both Howls Moving Castle and Spirited Away are concerned with the central character struggling to regain something that has been stolen from them - youth or their name - and so seem to me to be about situations and our reactions to them. Whereas we in the west are much more likely to see dramatic resolution in terms of the moral learning of the characters - Finding Nemo anyone?

Or maybe - like science fiction literature- its about these very ideas. I really enjoyed the play on the four parallel universes in Howls Moving Castle, the hero physically melting with depressive angst, the continuous interspecietal shapeshifting in both movies. But I felt let down by the almost Pythonesque denouements; the momentary realisation that one character was the same person who rescued another from drowning ten years ago, or is a long disappeared prince from a country that hasn't made a prior appearance in the movie. It just seemed trite, and Thomas Hardy, frankly, did it better.

Somehow I come to the conclusion that it's not about anything other than what the Wee Guy gets from it - some popcorn and two hours of superhero shenanigans; so I feel almost guilty that I have been looking too hard. I can't deny that I enjoyed both films a lot.

By the way the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton is one of the best picture houses in London, and regularly wins awards confirming this, but don't ask for a latte before lunchtime - unless you want it for lunch, in which case you'll be well sorted. How hard can it be? And when I asked if I would be quicker going across the road the girl said "yes probably". Try "yes definitely" honey!

Andrew Mishmash

This is the Station!

This is St. James's Park Station at 55 Broadway. MishMash Bookshop is on the ground floor of the mall inside.

This view is from Tothill Street, and is essentially the view of the approach from Westminster Abbey. Just out of shot on the left is New Scotland Yard, the police station that isn't; and I'm sorry to say that in shot on the extreme right is Basil Spence's horrific brutalist monstrosity 50 Queen Anne's Gate, that was until recently the home of The Home Office. Basil Spence died [of shame no doubt] shortly after it was completed in 1976; and it was that building which prompted Norman St. John Stevas to complain that Spence had now ruined two London parks, having designed the new Buckingham Barracks opposite Hyde Park. Which is probably the one thing I can agree with Lord NStJS about.

By the way you should note how filthy the otherwise stunning 55 Broadway building is. That's because Transport for London are too lazy, mean, stupid and philistine to keep it clean. These headquarters, and the astonishing clarity of their design, once reflected the optimism and pride that the railway pioneers quite rightly had in their project to modernise the very nature of working and living in urban London. And Transport for London have done more to brutalise the legacy of their predecessors than Basil Spence ever did. Thats what I think.....

Andrew Mishmash

Here's where we are...

We are located in the Broadway Shopping Mall, which is a “compact and bijoux” collection of coffee bars and independent businesses on the ground floor above St. James’s Park Underground Station in Westminster.

The building itself is rightly famous as the headquarters of Transport for London, designed by Charles Holden in the 1920’s [I promise a further opinionated blog at some point on the fascinating history of the building and its friezes]. It looks not unlike the monolithic hub edifice in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and was the tallest structure in London when it was built.

This means we are across the road from New Scotland Yard, the most famous police station in the world; we are round the corner from Buckingham Palace, home of the most famous lady in the world; and one minutes walk away from Westminster Abbey, which thanks to The Da Vinci Code is probably the most famous church in the world.

At lunchtime we can set our watches by the chimes of Big Ben, the clock on the Houses of Parliament; we are surrounded by the minor government departments that keep Britain ticking; and we are a stones throw [although I would not advise an empirical test] from St James’s Park, which used to be London’s leper colony.

And so here we are, three hundred square feet of bookselling empire, in possibly the most prestigious and powerful few hundred square yards on the planet. So now all you have to do is come and buy some books…