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That address again, it's the age of Remembourg. a contributing editor at the paper, whose books include a biography of Pugin, a history of

Stonehenge and most recently Times Witness, history in the age of romanticism, which is now

out in paperback. She wrote recently in the LRB about department stores, their recent decline and

fall, but also their 19th and 20th century heyday. The piece was a review of an exhibition at the Mouet Desire

Decoratif in Paris. Hello, Rosemeyne. Thank you very much for joining me. Hello, and thank you

for asking me. So I was trying to think while, or after reading your piece, if my children have

ever been to department store. Certainly when I was a child, my sisters and I used to stay at my

grandparents in the summer

holidays and a highlight of the trip that we'd always be taken. I would say if we'd been good,

but whether we'd be good or not, we'd always be taken by my grandmother to the toy department

at Weeks in Tumbridge Wells to pick out a small toy, which unlike many department stores,

does seem to still be there, though it's now a hoopers. But I don't think my children have ever done that, but a couple of years ago, I was in Berlin with my daughter, and it was a cold wet Monday in December, and all the museums were closed because it was Monday, so we went to Cardiffay, which did feel a bit like a museum. But department stores, as you say in your piece,

...