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Christina Foyle | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 30 January 1911 London, England |
| Died | 8 June 1999 (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Foyles bookshop owner |
Christina Agnes Lilian Foyle (30 January 1911 – 8 June 1999) was an English bookseller and owner of Foyles bookshop.
| |
Christina Foyle | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Born | 30 January 1911 London, England |
| Died | 8 June 1999 (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Foyles bookshop owner |
Christina Agnes Lilian Foyle (30 January 1911 – 8 June 1999) was an English bookseller and owner of Foyles bookshop.
Miss Foyle (as she liked to be called) was born in London, the daughter of William Foyle, a leading bookseller, owner of Foyles, on the Charing Cross Road in the West End of London. The shop had been established in 1904 by William and his brother Gilbert Foyle. Another brother was Charles Henry Foyle, inventor of the "folding carton" and founder of Boxfoldia. [1]
At the age of seventeen, after leaving a Swiss finishing school, Christina Foyle started working at her father's bookshop, and never left. [1] She was the only one of Foyle’s three children who made a career in the business. [2]
In 1930, when she was nineteen, Foyle created the world's first public literary luncheon, bringing together notable writers and other distinguished figures, to meet members of the public. The idea came to her from talking to Kipling, Shaw, H. G. Wells, and other writers while they were buying books, and thinking that others might enjoy such a chance. It also followed on from the literary lectures, without food or drink, started by her father, which were less successful. [2]
On one occasion, Foyle recommended The Forsyte Saga to an elderly customer who was looking for something to read on the train. He bought a copy, but returned it to her a short time later inscribed with the words "For the young lady who liked my book – John Galsworthy." [1]
For almost seventy years Christina Foyle presided over the Foyles literary luncheons. [1] They usually took place at the Dorchester or the Grosvenor House Hotel, and usually a guest speaker (who included Bertrand Russell and Margaret Thatcher) spoke in praise of a book, as well as the author. [2]
In May 1936, the Left Book Club was established, and about the end of 1936 a group of “neo-Tories” proposed the creation of a right-wing book club. William and Christina Foyle undertook to organize it, and the Right Book Club was launched at a luncheon at the Grosvenor House Hotel in April 1937, with Lord Stonehaven, the recently-retired Chairman of the Conservative Party, presiding. [3] The Right Book Club republished titles with conservative and classical liberal themes. [4]
In 1945, control of the shop passed to Miss Foyle. It was under her that the shop stagnated, with little investment and poorly paid staff who could be fired on a whim. She resisted unionisation of bookshop staff, sacking most employees just before they had worked there six months, when they would gain limited job protection rights. [5] She refused to install electronic tills or calculators, and orders would not be taken by phone. The shop would, however, order expensive books from as far off as Germany without prepayment.
The shop operated a payment system that required customers to queue three times: to collect an invoice for a book, to pay the invoice, then to collect the book: because sales staff were not allowed to handle cash. [6] There was a shelving arrangement that categorised books by publisher, rather than by topic or author. [5] A quote of this period is: "Imagine Kafka had gone into the book trade." [7] In the 1980s a rival bookshop placed an advertisement in a bus shelter opposite Foyles: "Foyled again? Try Dillons". [7]
Foyle met many leading literary and political figures during her life. Her collection of personal correspondence included a letter from Adolf Hitler, responding to her complaint about Nazi book-burning. Her literary friends included Kingsley Amis, Charles de Gaulle, D. H. Lawrence, Yehudi Menuhin, J. B. Priestley, George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Thatcher, Evelyn Waugh and H. G. Wells.
The Foyle Foundation was founded in 2001 under the terms of Christina Foyle's will. It makes grants to other UK charities, mainly in the fields of the arts and learning (until 2009, also health). The 2010 accounts showed funds of over £76 million. [8] Among other grants it made a large donation to the appeal to purchase the oldest intact European book, the St Cuthbert Gospel, for the British Library in 2011/12. [9] To the year ending June 2010 £41.4m worth of grants had been offered by the Foyle Foundation. [10]
Screenwriter Anthony Horowitz has said that Miss Foyle was the namesake for the title character, Christopher Foyle, in the ITV series Foyle's War .
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus, which then merges into Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direction of Charing Cross at the south side of Trafalgar Square. It connects via St Martin's Place and the motorised east side of the square.
Norman Beresford Tebbit, Baron Tebbit, is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served in the Cabinet from 1981 to 1987 as Secretary of State for Employment (1981–1983), Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1983–1985), and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Chairman of the Conservative Party (1985–1987). He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1970 to 1992, representing the constituencies of Epping (1970–1974) and Chingford (1974–1992).
W & G Foyle Ltd. is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and of number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
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William Alfred Westropp Foyle (1885–1963) was a British bookseller and businessman who co-founded Foyles bookshop in 1903 with his brother Gilbert Foyle.
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Dillons was a British bookseller founded in 1936, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based in Bloomsbury in London, the company expanded under subsequent owners Pentos in the 1980s into a bookselling chain across the United Kingdom. In 1995 Pentos went into receivership and sold Dillons to Thorn EMI, which immediately closed 40 of the 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis. Within Thorn EMI, Dillons was placed in the HMV Group, which had been a division of Thorn EMI since 1986. EMI demerged from Thorn in August 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.
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Patrick John Francis Cosgrave was a British-Irish journalist and writer. A staunch supporter of the British Conservative Party, he was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher whilst she was Leader of the Opposition.
The Silver Moon Bookshop was a feminist bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth, and Jane Anger. They established Silver Moon Bookshop to share intersectional feminist rhetoric with a larger community of readers and encourage open discussion of women’s issues. The shop served both as a safe space for women to participate in literary events and a resource center to learn about local feminist initiatives. The owners of Silver Moon Bookshop eventually expanded into the publishing field through establishing Silver Moon Books, as well as creating the store newsletter Silver Moon Quarterly.
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The Books Are My Bag Readers' Awards are annual literary awards presented by the Booksellers Association in the UK and Ireland since 2016. They are sponsored by National Book Tokens.
The Right Book Club was an English book club founded in 1937 by Christina and William Foyle to counter the influential Left Book Club, established in 1936 by Victor Gollancz.
Housmans is a bookshop in London, England, and is one of the longest-running radical bookshops in the United Kingdom. The shop was founded by a collective of pacifists in 1945 and has been based in Kings Cross, since 1959. Various grassroots organisations have operated from its address, including the Gay Liberation Front, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and London Greenpeace. Housmans shares its building with its sister organisation Peace News.
