A Tale of Two Libraries

Posted on | August 9, 2010 | No Comments

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This month’s Litro has a bit of an East London thread running through it, which is appropriate for me, as I’ve been trudging the streets of the East End looking at libraries.

Five years ago today, the old Whitechapel library closed its doors and made the controversial move a mile down the road to a shiny new glass cube called the Idea Store. The anniversary of this shift in library ideology is particularly resonant at the moment, considering the government’s recent pronouncements on the future of free books for all. Libraries face a tough time over the next few years, and some commentators seem to think they’re unlikely to survive it, at least not looking like anything we might recognize now. It’s a worrying time for those of us who love and use our libraries.

The old Whitechapel library played a crucial part in the literary history of this fluid, immigrant-fuelled eastern fringe of the City of London. The library, its beautiful red-brick façade crouching over the entrance to Aldgate East tube, was founded in 1892 by the prolific Victorian benefactor of the working classes, John Passmore Edwards. It was an important local institution for the Jewish community in the area, nicknamed the University of the Ghetto, and many writers who grew up in the area were regular visitors, using the library as an escape, and its books as an education.

Artists Mark Gertler and David Bomberg and the poet Isaac Rosenberg were regulars, later to be known as members of the Whitechapel Boys. The playwright and poet Bernard Kops hid from the realities of poverty and overcrowding in the reading rooms, later writing a poem as a tribute. “A loner in love with words, but so lost / and wandering the streets, not counting the cost. / I emerged out of childhood with nowhere to hide / when a door called my name / and pulled me inside. / And being so hungry I fell on the feast. / Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East.”

When Whitechapel library closed, the playwright Arnold Wesker, who used the library as a boy, was one of the critics of the move. “Whitechapel Library blazed the way and excited my love of reading books. It was a safe space with a reference room where old men read newspapers they couldn’t afford to buy. I owe the library a debt and lament its passing.”

But the thing is, Wesker’s description of that library, and Bernard Kops’s vision of it in his poem, could both apply equally now to the Idea Store. At the time, news reports on the Idea Store were sniffy about the fact that it promoted itself as being “next to Sainsbury’s”, as if the whole concept equated borrowing a book to buying a pint of milk. But what’s wrong with being next to Sainsbury’s? Supermarkets are generally in convenient places – why shouldn’t books be too?  Slap bang in the middle of the straggling and chaotic market that runs down Whitechapel Road, the Idea Store is in the heart of the community it serves. The doors are open, and the glass frontage means you see what you’re going in to. It’s not intimidating, it’s busy and buzzy. The ground floor is crowded, but as you go upwards into the building the floors become hushed and peaceful, with readers relaxing in chairs and at desks. Here are Wesker’s old men reading papers they can’t afford, side by side with students and other readers of all kinds. By the fourth floor, with its café and spectacular views over the City, I’d decided this is somewhere I’d happily come to read.

Perhaps change is a good thing for libraries. I love the musty, hushed beauty of Victorian libraries, but I also recognize that they risk becoming irrelevant to many people in the 21^st Century if they don’t change with the times. That’s not to say that books are irrelevant – far from it. Libraries have over 12.6 million active borrowers a year, and books are still at the heart of what they do. But it’s not all they do. They’re a crucial part of local communities, and that’s not just down to the dusty tomes.

George Orwell wrote that bookshops attract ‘not quite certifiable lunatics’ because they’re ‘one of the few places you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.’ Never mind the lunatics – we all need somewhere we can loiter without pressure to move along or make a purchase. People need somewhere they can go and ask for information, knowledge and help, and feel confident it will be given to them, for free. The library is that place.

The most worrying thing for me about the current plans for the future of libraries is the idea that they might become virtual spaces, where we order our books online and get them through the post. One of the crucial things about a library is that it’s a place you can visit. You can go there, talk to a librarian, sit down, read and spend time. You can take the kids and let them get their hands on books, make their own choices, listen to stories and join in. A friend of mine who works in a library seems to spend most of her time being something like a cross between a Citizen’s Advice Bureau, a social worker and a psychologist to her customers. Bernard Kops wrote about the library as a refuge and an escape, which wouldn’t have really worked if he’d been ordering his books on the net.

So, whether it’s an old red-brick building or a glass-fronted replacement, whether it’s run by paid staff or volunteers, whether it has shelves full of books or rooms full of terminals, a library needs a building, a real one. We shut the doors at our peril.

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Ballerina Sindy

Posted on | August 6, 2010 | 5 Comments

Ballerina Sindy wears white. She’s spotless, just out of the box, white tights, white ballet shoes with tiny straps, a white leotard and a stiff white tutu that fastens with a popper. She has perfect dark hair twisted into a bun and tied with a white band. Susan loves her wide, blue eyes. Ballerina Sindy is poised in an arabesque on top of the chest of drawers; she comes with a special stand that her leg fits into to keep her upright. She is the most beautiful thing Susan has ever owned.

Mum had said, “Choose what you’d like then, love,” and Susan had known she didn’t really mean choose what you’d like, she meant choose something cheap. But Susan had picked up Ballerina Sindy because Mark was there with his big hairy hand tucked in the back pocket of mum’s new jeans.

But then mum had said, “OK sweetheart,” and they’d gone straight to the till. Mum paid with a twenty pound note and the woman put Ballerina Sindy in a bag and handed it over, and Susan felt like she’d cheated.

“Come on, Susie!” Mum shouts up the stairs. “We’ll miss the start. Mark’s brought sparklers, isn’t that fun?”

Susan takes Ballerina Sindy out of her stand and slides her into the inside pocket of her coat because she knows mum won’t let her take Ballerina Sindy to the fireworks. Then Susan thinks that this time, mum might let her take her, and that would be worse, so she does up her coat buttons.

In the car, Susan can feel Ballerina Sindy against her chest. They get to the playing field and park, and the fireworks start as they’re climbing the hill. Susan thinks they look like giant dandelion clocks blowing apart in the sky, and she turns round to tell mum, but mum is looking at Mark. Her face lights up with each explosion. Susan takes Ballerina Sindy out of her pocket, because it’s too late for mum to say anything, but mum doesn’t notice. Susan holds Ballerina Sindy up and shows her the dandelions.

When the fireworks finish they walk up to where they’re lighting the bonfire. It’s made of stuff that looks funny together – old school chairs, a bit of fence, a wardrobe. The Guy on top of the pile is wearing a straw hat, but no one has painted him a face. The bonfire goes up with a whoosh and everyone takes a step back. Boys from Susan’s class are throwing sticks and cardboard and junk into the fire.

“Have you had a good day, love?” asks mum, standing with her arm through Mark’s arm. She sounds like it matters to her more than anything. Susan nods.

“Did you thank Mark for your doll?” says mum.

Susan remembers Mark’s hand tucked into the back pocket of mum’s jeans, and mum pulling out the twenty pound note at the till.

“That was kind of him, wasn’t it?” says mum.

“I told your mum to keep that quiet,” says Mark, and he wiggles mum’s arm backwards and forwards, and they’re both smiling.

Susan walks away from them towards the bonfire, pushing against the hot hands of air, feeling sparks brush her face. Her knees tingle like they do when she stands at the edge of the shed roof. Susan throws Ballerina Sindy into the fire, and just for a second she’s wearing a dress of Panda Pop orange that spits and crackles in dancing frills. Her sleek dark hair frizzes and her blue eyes stare straight at Susan, and neither of them blinks.

Short story portfolio

Posted on | July 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

Mr Bonner’s Dream the Night Before his Execution
This story was published in 2009 in the Mechanics’ Institute Review magazine. Click here to read the story.

The Escape
This story was performed live as part of the Market Estate Project in 2010, and again at Liars’ League. Click here for a text version of the story, or click here to hear an audio recording of actress Elizabeth Bower performing the story.

The Escape by Emily Cleaver

Posted on | July 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

(Performed at the Market Estate Project and Liars’ League, 2010.)

It’s Lionel Levett who releases the bull, unhitching the hasp from the ring through its nose. He watches it slip between the wooden boards of the stall and into the street, smooth as a ship launching. As it sails past he reaches up to douse its wide, warm flank with a splash of lemonade from the glass bottle in his hand.

The bull reminds Lionel of his father, and if there’s one thing in the world Lionel would like to do for his dad, it’s set him loose. Nev Levett owns a market stall selling the scrap silver that stains his hands black with sulphide. Sometimes Lionel finds his dad stretched out under the stall with a handkerchief over his face like a corpse, but he isn’t sleeping, he’s shaking. Annie, Lionel’s stepmother – that’s who Lionel blames. Annie has a sting like a gadfly when she gets going. So the bull, sweltering in its stall in the Cally Market, makes Lionel think of his dad, and so off the chain comes and out the bull goes. Lionel watches after it with the feeling of a job well done.

Perhaps lying under things runs in the Levett family. Three streets away, Frank Levett, Lionel’s older brother, is lying on his back under the kitchen table. He’s naked. The reasons for this are complex and various. Frank has liked to lie on the floor since he was a child – his mother sometimes had trouble getting him to stand or walk at all. Frank preferred to wriggle on his stomach like a snake. Things, Frank has always thought, look different from the floor. It changes your perspective, makes the familiar strange and the small familiar. Plus, it’s August, it’s hot, and the dark cave formed by the checked tablecloth is a shelter from the sun that floods the room, and from other things too. Why is Frank naked? He has just nearly had sex with his step-mother Annie. Just nearly, because Frank, standing in front of Annie’s bed with his clothes already in a heap at his feet, suddenly scooped them up and ran from the room.

Annie hasn’t bothered following him yet. In the meantime, under the table seems as good a place to consider the situation as any. Frank hasn’t slept with Annie before, but he has had what he considers impure thoughts about her. He also has impure thoughts about Sarah Davey, whose dad runs the grocer’s stall on Market Street. She has a well-developed chest for a fifteen year old, and wields it like her only weapon, standing with her hands on her hips and her legs apart like the Colussus of Rhodes. Recently he’s been thinking impure thoughts about Annie and Sarah more than he’s been thinking about cigarette cards, which is still mostly what he thinks about the rest of the time. He’s one away from the full Tottenham Hotspur set, with only goalie George Clawley missing. Frank’s dreams at night are an exciting muddle of Annie, Sarah and the elusive George.

Annie has had impure thoughts about Frank too, who’s tall for sixteen, and already has the shadow of a moustache. You can’t really blame Annie for this, in her opinion. She’s only thirty herself, and her husband Nev is a useless lug with black hands and a red forehead, and all she’s got out of life so far are two children that aren’t her own and the run of two dingy rooms above the Cally Market that stink of cow shit on Mondays and Thursdays and rattle with the racket from the silver stalls on Tuesday and Fridays. She’s entitled to a little enjoyment, she reckons. Not that she’s getting up and chasing after Frank though. He’ll come back soon enough, that’s Annie’s assessment of the situation.

So Annie lies and listens to the distant clatter and shout from outside, where the bull has reached the Market Road and is swinging down the middle of it through the crowd like a bowling ball through skittles. In the kitchen, Frank stares up at the underside of the table. It’s made from the lid of a packing crate and the word SEVILLE is stamped across the underside of the boards. Frank knew the shape of this mysterious word before he could read, tracing it like the map of a torturous red road. Now he reads it with new eyes, and sees that there’s a message in it, one that’s been waiting here for him to discover all his life, hidden in plain sight. The hot red word, EVIL.

Frank crawls out from under the table and puts his clothes on. He shuts the door quietly behind him and creeps down the stairs and into the street. He can hear the market from the doorstep, the din of the crowd and the bellow of the animals, and it makes him think of hell.

Nev Levett is sitting in the Black Bull pub with his thick arms on the table, drinking porter from a pewter mug, sucking the froth from his moustache and thinking about dogs. Nev wishes he’d got a dog instead of another wife. A dog wouldn’t hide his tobacco or tell him not to grind his teeth. But his wife won’t hear of a dog. So Nev is picturing the dog he should have got, with a sagacious face and a glint in its eye, when the bull passes the window. It has just tossed over a haberdashery stall and caught a length of white taffeta on its horns, so it looks like a massive, stately bride coming down the street, with a train of boys, shop assistants and cattle drivers shouting and jostling along behind it. The bull is lost in the labyrinth of streets and pens, a hot maze at the centre of which the bull remembers its stall as a haven of cool shade. It is trying to get back there. Occasionally one or two of the braver men will make a dash for the ring through its nose and not quite reach it, ducking away from the sweep of its pitchfork horns as it turns.

The bull reminds Nev Levett of someone. He feels strangely sad, jealous almost, as if he is watching another man succeed where he has failed. He downs the porter and hurries from the pub, pulling his flat cap low over his brow and jingling the change in his pocket.

Lionel has a scientific mind. He likes to watch, to set an experiment going and follow it to its conclusion in the spirit of rational enquiry. The results may prompt him to raise an eyebrow, or nod at the confirmation of a hypothesis. Lionel has been following the bull’s path, from the stall where he set it going, to the point where it is now. Its trajectory is as interesting to him as the curve of a ball to a physicist. So Lionel is in the crowd, swigging occasionally from his lemonade bottle, his cap pushed back on his forehead and his shirtsleeves rolled up in the heat. It gives him a bit of a turn to see his dad fall into step by his side, because Nev Levett and the bull have the same look of earnest confusion at the way things have turned out.

“Alright, dad. Bull’s out.”

“Son. Seems that way.”

And now, Lionel is watching his dad with renewed interest, because there’s something precarious in the old man’s eyes, and Lionel’s wondering what it will lead to.

Frank Levett is on Maiden Lane. The heat is opening him out like a peeled orange, ripe and slightly swollen. Frank is preoccupied with the question of whether nearly sleeping with your stepmother is counted as incest. The warning message from the underside of the kitchen table is printed over everything, and when he blinks he sees Annie on the bed, breasts small as satsumas in Christmas stockings, belly button staring at him like an eye. His face is flushed, and he keeps the church steeple of St Mary Magdalene in sight. He draws level with Davey’s stall, and there’s Sarah, with her red mottled arms clutched together below her chest, the top tie of her dress undone.

“Hot, ain’t it?” she says, and Frank throbs so dangerously all through his body that he runs past without saying a word.

On Market Street, Nev Levett has parted the crowd like a rock in a river and Lionel has followed in his wake. They’re right up front near the bull. Then a window in the building above them crashes open and a woman screams. Whether she’s screaming at the sight of the bull or at something more sinister inside the house is unclear, but the bull snorts and pirouettes on the spot so that it’s facing the crowd. And at the head of the crowd are Lionel and his dad Nev.

The bull roars. The heat, the dazzling white of the material caught on its horns, the cobbles slippery with dung and cabbage leaves under its hooves, all send him into a frenzy. It charges.

The crowd scatters, down side streets, into doorways, through windows, behind fences. Lionel and Nev dive under a barrow. They lie in the straw and muck, staring at the wooden boards above them.

And it’s right at this moment, when the bull is spinning in crazy circles in the empty street, that Frank Levett turns the corner. Frank and the bull stop. There is something indefinable in both their eyes. In Frank’s it could be something like the recognition of a deserved fate. In the bull’s, it’s more like a pleading for peace. They face each other.

Under the barrow, Nev Levett is hanging onto Lionel’s collar .

“What about Frank, dad?”

Nev shuffles onto his side and looks him in the eye, then he’s away, rolling out from under the barrow and springing to his feet, in between the bull and his oldest son.

In this moment, from under the barrow, Lionel suddenly sees the threads between everything; the ones that move us all around like puppets. There must be threads, Lionel thinks. What else could explain the trajectories of father, brothers and bull, here, to this street, on this sunny afternoon? Lionel knows now that it wasn’t him who set the bull going, even though his hand slipped the chain.

Nev Levett makes himself wide, flinging his arms open, because someone in the pub once told him that’s what you do with bears. There aren’t any bears in Camden, but it might work just as well with a bull, he thinks. The bull stamps its foot and starts to run. They are twenty feet apart, ten, five, and Nev is looking straight into the bull’s brown eyes, and there’s recognition there, flashing between them. For a moment Nev sees the puppet threads too, dancing him and the bull together. The bull catches Nev on its horns, twists him up and throws him casually as a bag of straw. Then it paws the ground in a puzzled manner and trots away, back to its stall. You can set a creature free, but sometimes it prefers its trap.

Frank and Lionel Levett run forward to pat and shake their dad’s broad chest where he lies in the road. Nev is staring up into the sky. It’s far too big and deep, as if he’s looking into a bottomless pool. Vertigo grips him and he closes his eyes. That’s better. Now he sees the planks of the bottom of his own market stall above him, each whorl and line known to him like a secret language, and he feels safer; not like he’s falling at all.

(This story was performed live as part of the Market Estate Project in 2010, and again at Liars’ League. Click here to hear an audio recording of actress Elizabeth Bower performing the story.)

Tea Cosy

Posted on | July 30, 2010 | 1 Comment

“Give the spout a drink,” Gramp would say, sloshing a spurt of hot water through the pot before he filled it. Then he’d bring the pot in on a tray with the cups, wearing the tea cosy on his head.

Gran did all the food; banana sandwiches, coffee-cream éclairs, fruit cake. Gramp was in charge of tea. That was his thing; that, and putting the tea cosy on his head. Sometimes we’d pretend not to notice. Everyone would go on talking, reading the paper, watching telly, and Gramp would have to put the milk in the cups, pour the tea and hand them round, all with the cosy on his head, his face grim. He couldn’t take it off until someone laughed.

It wasn’t just at their house. He’d do it at ours too. In photos of us opening presents on Christmas Day, Gramp lurks in the background with our tea cosy on his head. My aunt’s cosy was black and gold; Gramp wore that one tall and proud as a Bishop’s mitre.

Gramp found retirement hard. He liked to be up and doing. He worked part-time as a bearer at a funeral home for a while, and then at Tesco, collecting trolleys. Then he didn’t work at all. He talked less. When he got Parkinson’s, he stopped making the tea.

The last time I saw Gramp laugh was when we played cards at Christmas. He’d played Rummy on the bonnet of his staff car in the desert near Alexandria in the war. He knew this game at least, he said. Wasn’t half bad at it. He told us the rules, twice.

These days we make tea in mugs, plopping in a bag and scrunching it round with a spoon. I bought a cosy once, a while ago, but it’s never been worn.

Word Hunting: A Language-Lovers Sport

Posted on | July 29, 2010 | No Comments

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There are some words that are worth keeping, I’ve always thought. Everyone has their favourites – my friend Neil always swears by cornucopia. Defenestration seems to come up quite regularly. I’ve heard a case made for infinitesimal, although I’ve always had a soft-spot for chevron. But there are thousands of beautiful words I encounter, think ‘oh what a lovely word,’ and then promptly forget. So, I’ve started word hunting, keeping good words I find, just for their own sake.

Old books are ideal for word hunting. Sometimes, opening one is like lifting a stone and surprising the words like woodlice. Non-fiction is ideal, and the more obscure the book, the better the words. In fact, the book itself doesn’t much matter – it’s just a receptacle for its words. I usually don’t even keep the books I collect words from; I reap and get rid. It’s the words that count in this game.

In a secondhand bookshop I found a handwritten shop ledger for a drapers from 1876, belonging to a Master Williams, who wrote his name in a flowery, slanting hand inside the cover. It lists invoices for the orders of cloth going out of the shop. That’s all that’s in the ledger, an everyday thing probably forgotten about once it was full. But it’s a hoard of beautiful words. Here’s a taste of the ones I kept:

In January Master Williams sold shalloon, silk serge and Saxony doeskin, Scotch sheeting, swansdown and India silk handkerchiefs. In February, rough loom, red chintz and Russia duck. In March it was lutestring, lace cardinal and linen huckaback. In April there was calico, cambric and cashmere shawls. In May crimson velvet, Paramatta Cloth, damask and drab moleskin, and in June black crape, bombazine and black moiré. Even to list the words is to start writing a poem.

Word hunting can uncover tiny stories too –in the draper’s ledger, customers spring to life as potential characters for stories. I like to picture the Reverend Steward, who wanted fine white counterpanes and Wilton blankets, standing tutting in the queue behind the more stylishly inclined Reverend E Boyce, ordering a silk umbrella and two pairs of kid gloves. And I think it’s hard not to make assumptions about a Mr. Robert Barnard, who ordered buck-skin braces and mohair socks.

Another word goldmine I found once was something called The Art of Painting in Miniature. All that was left of it were some loose pages held together with a couple of ragged threads. It looked like it might be 18^thCentury (the letter s is written as f), and the author, whose name is missing, is informing the reader about the types of paint used for miniatures. The words (with their old spellings) are luscious. Verditer, Prussian, Indigo Smalt, Carmine, Drop Lake, Chinese Vermillion, Indian Red, Gall-Stone, Terra Sienna, Roman Oker, Sap-Green, Lamp-Black and Flake White

And the tiny story is there too, in all its smelly, dirty, 18^th Century detail: “I would recommend my readers to apply to the slaughtermen at the Victualling Office, or any private slaughter-house who will examine the gall-bladders of the oxen, in many of which gall-stones (being concrescences formed in the bladder) are found; by this mode only, will the artist or amateur attain possession of this unrivalled colour in its pure state.”

Sometimes the most technical books are written like poetry. A Catachism of the Laws of Storms, written by a John Macnab in 1884, is a textbook for trainee sailors on how to navigate through bad weather. The instructions are dry and technical, but the words conjure up the terrifying storms themselves, which John Macnab clearly maintained a healthy awe of. He warns against ragged, immense, pyramidal seas, long rolling and wild with their great rotating, spherical squalls and storm-fields, oscillating and overwhelming as they veer and shift on the outer verge, the cross seas hiding calm centres.

I’m never quite sure when my word collections are going to come in handy, but they always do, sooner or later. Flicking through an old notebook and being delighted all over again by bombazine, verditer or images of squally storm-fields usually sparks off ideas for stories, poems or character names. It’s my belief that some of the most beautiful poems and stories were inspired by their authors’ experiences of word hunting. John Masefield’s poem Cargoes is my favourite example – “Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir…” I’d put money on the fact that he came across the word quinquireme at some point in his sea-faring life, (it’s a kind of ship) and the rest of the poem followed, even if it was years later.

If you’ve discovered you own unusual favourite words, I’d love to hear them. Use the #favouritewords hashtag on Twitter to let them loose on the world.

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A Week of Whales

Posted on | July 18, 2010 | No Comments

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I’ve been haunted by whales this week. It all started with Dave from my writing group trying to list songs about whales, which spawned an eclectic playlist. Then I turned on the TV to be confronted by a whale being dissected.  (They’d just gouged out something called the glove finger – a bit of the ear shaped like a pointing hand in a glove.) Then the next day I wandered into the brilliant Judd Books in Bloomsbury, picked up a collection of Ted Hughes’s poems for children and found his beautiful Moon-Whales poem. Three whales in a row must be a sign, so I set out on a quest for whales in literature.

I started with Ted Hughes’s whales, which swim across the surface of the moon, ‘lifting the moon’s skin / Like a muscle’. It’s a beautifully visual poem, its whales huge, mysterious and geologically slow. The poem’s repeated ‘oo’ and ‘m’ sounds echo the whales’ calls.

Sometimes they plunge deep
Under the moon’s plains
Making their magnetic way
Through the moon’s interior metals
Sending the astronaut’s instruments scatty.

Next, I went back to an early example of whale-lit: Jonah’s Biblical encounter, which already contains all the motifs of the genre – swallowing, fate, death, rebirth and existential angst….

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Poems as performance … John Cooper Clarke

Posted on | July 12, 2010 | No Comments

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Last week I squeezed into a packed and sweaty auditorium at the South Bank Centre to watch performance poet and punk legend John Cooper Clarke’s show for the London Literature Festival.

The Bard of Salford was on good form, despite the temperature. Now in his 60s, he still has the style of Bob Dylan, mixed with the dead-pan delivery of Alan Bennett and just the right sprinkle of Bernard Manning. He delivered a stream of curiously old-fashioned stand-up, interspersed with his own brand of rapid-fire performance poetry. His disjointed jokes and puns revelled in an infectious love of language, perfect for a literary festival. (“If you shot a peasant, could you get off on the grounds of dyslexia?”)

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Judging books by their covers: 75 Years of Penguin Sci Fi

Posted on | July 4, 2010 | No Comments

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The main characteristic of the Penguin paperbacks we have on sale at the secondhand bookshop I work in is scruffiness. They’ve usually been read, re-read, loved, kept in pockets, stuffed under pillows and carried round in bags before being passed on to that great secondhand bookshop in the sky (or Charing Cross Road, in this case). In other words, they’ve fulfilled the vision of Allen Lane, Penguin’s founder, who created a publishing house with the philosophy of making great fiction affordable for all… click to read more at Litro Magazine…

Torquemada and the Torturous Literary Puzzle

Posted on | June 26, 2010 | No Comments

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It might be a sign of the digital times, or an indicator of economic gloom, but working in a second hand bookshop can be slow. We have many techniques for passing the hours: Theatre-Direction Bingo (works especially well on a Saturday night in the West End), Weirdest Book Title competitions and sneaky behind-the-cash-desk chess to name a few. This week my colleague Jan discovered a book called Torquemada’s 112 Best Crossword Puzzles on a dusty shelf in the basement – a collection of cryptic crosswords with literary themes published in 1942. Rashly confident of our book-geek credentials, we tackled one. Click to read more…

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