PEACEFUL READING IN A TIME OF FEAR AND WAR: 1/4: 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
🗓️ 15 July 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
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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).
1817 Buckingham Library
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, he's cute. Mr. I can never sleep when I'm traveling. He's hugging his pillow like a sloth on a branch. |
| 0:10.0 | He couldn't sleep before. Now listen to him him sounds like an elephant with a chest infection |
| 0:16.0 | Well they call him a dreamer and now they're right all aboard mister I can never sleep when I'm traveling. |
| 0:23.0 | Find all the comfort you need in the quiet lounge. |
| 0:26.0 | Piando Ferries, there is another way. This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:35.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:40.0 | This is CBS. This is |
| 0:43.4 | CBS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor |
| 0:47.3 | Provincial Britain a train station a mission. The Mission is Oliver Darkshire. His new book, Once Upon A Tome, tells the |
| 0:58.4 | adventures, or the subtitle correctly, the misadventures of a rare bookseller. |
| 1:04.0 | Once upon a tome, Oliver traveled to a provincial station in Britain on a mission off site to |
| 1:11.0 | look at a collection of books in the chance that there were rare books. |
| 1:16.2 | That's an important distinction. |
| 1:18.4 | Oliver, of hearty congratulations and a very good evening to you. |
| 1:23.3 | Please describe what you learn as you got off the train and then sought your rare bookseller |
| 1:30.4 | moment at a home that I pictured as having many turrets and lots of |
| 1:37.0 | Victorian touches but inside was a library good evening to you |
| 1:41.6 | good evening to you. Good evening, thank you for having me. I mean as I stepped off the train, it was one of those train stations, when I say in the middle of nowhere, I mean were trees some steps to come down off it and then no signposts no directions no no town really there was a road if you can call it that |
| 2:01.5 | with several roads spiraling off it. |
| 2:03.6 | And I realized that first I should have bought a map or someone with me. |
| 2:08.0 | I was too proud, you see, I wanted to, every bookseller wants to find rare things by themselves, you want to discover them. |
| 2:15.0 | You know, so I thought, how hard can it be? My first outing by myself as a read bookseller, I'll find this house. |
... |
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