The Aardvark Blog

Fanshaw Books and a bit of nostalgia
12/09/2020

Heard today that Fanshaw Books who employed us on a freelance basis after Edward and I set up Aardvark Books is no more. The company grew out of the embers of Roy Bloom Ltd, the great wholesale remainder business that Edward and I both worked for prior to setting up Aardvark. Roy Bloom had over-expanded leading to a collapse, but the new company Fanshaw was very successful for many years and I was always glad to place an order with them a couple of times a year (they were the only remainder company we have ever bought from on a consistent basis and indeed the only one I have bought from since Edward died in 2014). Adam Bloom will continue to run his small chain of shops and I hope that he is benefiting from the bounce back that many bookshops are reporting.

Obviously thoughts of Fanshaw make me think about Edward, my friend and business partner. I often wonder what he would have made of different developments - I am not sure how he would have got on with lockdown as he was not a natural rule follower. If his doctors had banned him from drinking wine I feel that it would not have been an easy period (for his friends and family as well as for him). At times I miss him more than I can say and as time goes on fewer of our customers remember him or what Aardvark was like when we ran it together. I hope that I have been able to keep some of the spirit he brought to the bookshop, but he had a natural warm character, and his shoes are not easy to fill.

We have put our big Christmas book order in at the beginning of the week, so I am expecting many of the fantastic titles we've ordered to start to filter into the shop by the end of next week. In the interim I am intent on processing as many as possible of my recent purchases. I was very busy when lockdown was lifted and most of those books are yet to find their way into the shop. What is more, new books are going out each day into the sale, so there is more than ever to buy!