Publishers' wares in Westminster

"During this time I noticed the windows of publishers' offices. To say that the standard of display has now improved will be to make those who had not marked their former disarray boggle with incredulity.  The faded crepe paper and yellow jackets of one were matched by the dust and dead flies of another.  Warped bindings, scratched peg-boarding, bearing the hangover of last year's sellotape, curling show-cards and scarred areas of cobwebbed woodwork displaying nothing except the need for a char -- these typified the average publisher's window.  In some cases, still do.  But many are now making concessions to current trends and while the effect is mostly pathetic there are exceptions, like Heinemann's, who in their new building in Queen Street, Mayfair, mount eye-catching set pieces.  Macmillan's, in St Martin's Street and Collins', in St. James's Place, however, maintain a stately domestic dignity and do not show their wares at all."

The Book of Westminster  ed. Ian Norrie

Valedictory: The Scholar to the Ashes of his Library

"Gone the books of many names,
Eaten up by hostile flames,
Loss of all his store at once
Leaves him a senescent dunce.

Tecum habita et noris
What your freightage at threescore is.
Where is now a lifetime's reading?
Is aught left for years succeeding?
Just a few scraps often quoted,
Or a fragment vaguely noted;
All is ash and burnt-out embers
But what one poor brain remembers.
Yet he sees the friendly faces
Row on row in their set places;
Knows exactly what is in them,
Could he wake up and re-win them.
Nay; they're ghosts, and they are gone
Into charred oblivion.

Fortune of the war, old man;
Play the Stoic if you can;
In the breast the heart be hid
Of the Second Aeneid,
Known and conned too many years
Not to transubstantiate tears.
'Studies into manners pass' --
So the sage's saying was.
Studies are for virtue's sake;
Be the man that they should make."

Charles Brodribb     Lincoln's Inn, October 1940
From The Book of The City,  editor Ian Norrie