Topping and Company: 'a new book quarter for York?'

YORK has a good track record with books.

I am interested to learn via The Press that a new bookshop is destined for the city.

Note the word ‘bookshop’ and not, for example, ‘restaurant’.

A refreshing change. The Topping & Co bookshop will be doubly new in that it will be a newcomer to the city, stocking new, not second hand, books.

This development makes me reel back over decades of the York book scene.

Some long-standing shops like Godfrey’s, Pickerings, Edwin Storey and SPCK have gone as have shorter-lived names such as Borders, Dillons, Penguin and Hardings to name just some. York has ‘got through’ some books, and bookshops, over the past few decades, you can’t deny. Quite a list

Such a development can be a source of concern to existing businesses in the same sector.

I hope the result of this new arrival will be a significant net increase of new book sales in York with existing bookshops not adversely affected.

I’m told on the positive side that competition can lead to growth across the genre with York gaining a reputation as the place for choice of bookshops in the North of England.

Something like that happened on the York second-hand and antiquarian book scene some years ago.

I trust that both existing booksellers and the newcomer will prosper with York residents buying more books and the city experiencing a surge in book tourism!

York could have its own ‘book quarter’; are they on the wrong side of the river to qualify as ‘Left Bank’? Can never work that one out!PS: What makes you think I’m an ex-bookseller?

Derek Reed,

Middlethorpe Drive,

York

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Well done Joe!

CONGRATULATIONS to Yorkshire’s Joe Root on breaking Sir Alastair Cooks’s record of scoring the most runs in Test cricket for England.

Fully professional in all aspects, dedicated, modest but highly ambitious, always polite, helpful to others. Should be adopted as the perfect role model by all sports-mad youngsters.

Peter Rickaby,

West Park,

Selby

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