Thirty
years ago, we went to London for our tenth wedding anniversary. In addition to
all the sights, I did manage to make it to Foyle’s Bookstore on Charing Cross
Road (although I don’t recall buying anything) and to the book department at
Harrod’s (I do remember buying a volume of John Mortimer’s Rumpole of the Bailey.
Last
month, we spent two weeks in London – our 40th wedding anniversary.
And I did manage to find a few books. Well, perhaps more than a few.
This
time, I was looking for poets – British poets. And I found them, at the British
Library shop (and it’s a great shop), at Harrod’s book department (which looked
different fromw hat I remembered), and at Blackwell’s on Charing Cross Road.
London is a big city, and it can still support bookstores, at least on Charing
Cross, where you can find Blackwell’s and Foyle’s as well as numerous used
bookstores.
I
bought poetry collections by two poets I was familiar with – Philip Larkin and
Ted Hughes – and several I wasn’t familiar with. One of those was Sam Willetts,
and the volume I bought (at Harrod’s) was New
Light for the Old Dark.
To
continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak
Poetry.
