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Star bookshop

In April 1991, and in the face of a rather large overdraft, American Mary Manley decided to open a secondhand bookshop - one that would be based on the swap system and called Barter Books. Her husband, Stuart (originally from Durham, so nearly a local!) immediately took to the idea and suggested that Mary open the shop in the front room of what was then his small manufacturing plant, located in Alnwick's magnificent old Victorian railway station. From that time a joint partnership was formed that would eventually result in what the New Statesman magazine would call 'The British Library of secondhand bookshops'.

The above is an excerpt from www.barterbooks.co.uk/html/About Us/Shop History.php - a site well worth visiting, as is the bookshop itself - and it's now a lot bigger and definitely a lot cosier than it was when we first visited with our then little kids back in the 1990's!

 

100x 2023 edition - Northumberland revisited - 73/100

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Uploaded on December 22, 2023
Taken on December 19, 2023