posted on 13 Nov 2017

The Bookshop Holiday by Constance M. White

Published in 1969 The Bookshop Holiday must have felt like a bit of an anachronism even then – you really wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that it had been published at least ten years earlier. It’s old-fashioned in just about every sense of the word and that might just be the reason for its powerful nostalgic charm.

Young Paul (age unspecified but if the illustrations are anything to go by about 10 ) is packed off on the train to his Uncle Tufty’s bookshop at the seaside in order that he should recuperate from a bout of the measles. On the way he meets another family with a young girl of about his own age called Debby – and it turns out that she and the family have a holiday home very close to Uncle Tufty’s shop.

Uncle Tufty turns out to be a splendid avuncular character with a terrible memory and an even worse head for business. He loves books and doesn’t really like to part with them – not good characteristics for a bookseller – and he’s getting perilously close to not being able to pay his bills. He doesn’t worry about it but his assistant, Bart, certainly does and he’s got a plan to help out that he’s keeping secret.

White also builds a modest little bit of mystery into the story – but to be honest you’d have to be extraordinarily inattentive not to guess what’s behind the strange disappearance of some very saleable books from the shop’s shelves. Paul and Debby set themselves up as detectives to catch the thief – and yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s actually Bart who is busy taking and selling books Tufty won’t part with and squirrelling the money away to help pay the bills.

When the truth is uncovered all is explained and forgiven and Paul also has the start of his own book collection featuring ships. He’ll come back again next year and with any luck Debby and her family will also be back.

This is an unthreatening world in which it’s impossible to imagine anything horrible could ever happen; a world that probably never existed and if it did, it is long gone. The book has a series of pen and ink illustrations by Robert Hales that are reminiscent of the early Shirley Hughes or even the sort of drawings Raymond Briggs produced for his early book illustration career. These as much as anything fix the book in a lost past when boys of Paul’s age still wore shorts and sensible sandals when they weren’t in school uniform.

I think it’s almost impossible for a book like this to be written today let alone published and so I keep it as a valuable record of our social history – it is, of course, an added bonus that it’s about books and bookshops and that’s enough to keep me happy.

Terry Potter

November 2017