The Shops Of Britain

First Published in 1998. This is Volume XV of the eighteen in the Sociology of Work and Organization series and this book on The Shops of Britain follows the author's publication on Retail Trade Associations, a new form of monopolist organization in Britain. After the book had been completed, the Report of the Census of Distribution Committee, published in March 1946, urged the necessity of providing more statistical information about the distributive trades. One of the purposes of this book is to display how complex the structure of retailing is and to show that it is dependent on a great variety of economic, social, occupational and sociological factors which cannot be adequately assessed without a comparative analysis of all the various trades concerned with retailing.

“I was lying in bed, trying to think of it. And I was singing to myself, badly. ‘Shoobie-shoobie-do.’ Then it came to me: Shoe-Be-Do.” Shop Horror is a celebration of the best of the worst in British shop names—from the genuinely inventive to the truly awful. The Prawnbrokers. Sherlock Homes Properties. Pane in the Glass Windows. Sherwood Florist. A hilarious read, packed with color photos and words of wisdom from some the nation’s most imaginative shopkeepers.

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

Bookshop Tours of Britain is a slow-travel guide to Britain, navigating bookshop to bookshop. Across 18 bookshop tours, the reader journeys from the Jurassic Coast of southwest England, over the mountains of Wales, through England's industrial heartland, up to the Scottish Highlands, and back via Whitby, the Norfolk Broads, central London, the South Downs, and Hardy's Wessex. On their way, the tours visit beaches, castles, head down coal mines, go to whiskey distilleries, bird watching, hiking, canoeing, to stately homes, and the houses of some of Britain's best-loved historic writers—and, last but not least, a host of fantastic bookshops.

What will become of the shops? More than ever, the high street appears to be under mortal threat, its shops boarded up as the sad 'bricks and mortar' survivals of a pre-online retail world. But behind the bleak appearance, there is more to see. Back to the Shops offers a set of short and surprising chapters, each one a window into a different shop type or mode of selling. Old shopping streets are seen from new angles; fast fashion shows up in eighteenth-century edits. Here are pedlars and pop-ups, mail order catalogues and mobile greengrocers' shops. Here too are food markets open till late on a Saturday night, and tiny subscription libraries tucked away at the back of the sweet shop. Over time, shops have occupied radically different places in cultural arguments and in our everyday lives. They are essential sources of daily provisions, but they are also the visible evidence of consuming excess. They are local community hubs and they are dreamlands of distraction. Shops are inherently spaces of imagination as well as of practicality. They belong with their own surrounding streets and town; they bring back the times and places of our lives. They linger in stories of all kinds, whether far-fetched or round the corner. From butcher to baker and from markets to motor vans—after reading this book, you will want to go back to the shops.