The best charity bookshops in London are Oxfam bookshops. The books are well shelved, sorted according to subject area and alphabetically and priced slightly more highly. And the best book section in an Oxfam bookshop, I don't mind sharing this with you, is run by "the book lady" in Twickenham . Her name is Felicity. Felicity must be in her late 80s. She is thin and smiles and wears pince nez . Her diction is slow, and her vowels and consonants are grooved into the the clarity and timbre of the 1940s. She says she is so pleased when she can "match a person with a book." She thinks that "well, most literature is either Dionysian or Apollonian, isn't it." - she says this with another cheering smile. Recently, I bought from her, for 2 pounds, a 150 year old red leather bound volume of Sir. Walter Scott's poetry (Why on Earth did I do that?), A book including two of Thomas Paine's pieces, and three other books: Fraser, The Golden Bough, the ...
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head