COLLECTORS ONLY: The joy of book collecting explained: 2/4: Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller by Oliver Darkshire (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Misadventures-Rare-Bookseller/dp/1324092076/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Welcome to Sotheran’s, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabeled keys, poisoned books, and some things that aren’t even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.
Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd (est. 1761) to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram).
A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause the computer to burst into flames. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives―where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one.
By turns unhinged and earnest, Once Upon a Tome is the colorful story of life in one of the world’s oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling, where to be uncommon or strange is the best possible compliment.
1690 Eton College
Transcript
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| 0:38.0 | CBSI in the world. I'm John Bachelor with Oliver Darkshire. He is the author of a new book, Once Upon A Tome. |
| 0:41.0 | It is extremely well written and it is charming, but at the same time it's |
| 0:45.8 | a world that I did not know existed. |
| 0:49.2 | That is inside a rare bookseller's shop. You enter into this and I kept having moments thinking I was |
| 0:55.9 | entering into a Twilight Zone episode that the 21st century would disappear and I |
| 1:01.3 | would be in the 18th century and all these books would be new. |
| 1:05.0 | Oliver had a first day at Southerans answering what looked to be an opportunity for an |
| 1:11.1 | apprentice. |
| 1:12.1 | Oliver can you take us to that moment that you opened the door, your experiences what you saw, what it felt like? |
| 1:19.0 | Thank you. |
| 1:20.0 | Well, initially I tried to open the wrong door. There are double door coming into the Sutherland's and they keep one locked at all times for literally no reason. |
| 1:28.0 | So I opened that one, I didn't and I slammed into it, and then I embarrassed, feeling embarrassed for myself myself walked into the second one |
| 1:35.0 | The atmosphere hits you like a wall as you come into an old book store like that. |
| 1:39.0 | The books muffled the sound. |
| 1:41.0 | So you can hear the traffic, the noises, you're screaming on Piccadilly and then you enter the |
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