John Sandoe
John Sandoe
(10 July 1930 – 29 December 2007) was a British bookseller, and the founder in
1957 of the bookshop John Sandoe Books in what had previously been a poodle
parlour on Blacklands Terrace off King's Road, near Sloane Square.The Times
called him "one of London's leading independent booksellers".
John Sandoe
founded the shop in 1957: according to a customer who knew the shop in its
infancy, it began with three planks laid on bricks on which were laid out “all
the books one could ever hope to find in one place”. More books and more
shelves followed, more floors and an expanding shop front too, but the original
ethos remains the same.
Sandoe’s
today is a general book shop with a bias towards the humanities – fiction,
history, biography, poetry, art, architecture, decorative arts, music, theatre,
cinema, photography, fashion, natural history, gardening, travel, cookery,
science, reference, and an excellent children’s department.
We are on
three floors of three adjoining – and small – eighteenth century shops, with
gorgeous window boxes spilling down from the first floor. Books are crammed in
everywhere, piled on tables and even on the stairs. No surface escapes its
burden, except a few chairs and window seats. The somewhat old-fashioned and
picturesque appearance is finely balanced with 21st century digital technology.
As well as
regular local customers and visitors from abroad, we have a loyal clientele in
the United Kingdom, Europe and around the world who receive our quarterly lists
of recommended new titles. (See Browse Catalogues) We also have lively
programme of events – talks by authors and book launches. (See Events) We have
5 full-time and 5 part-time staff to serve our customers. Orders may be placed
by telephone or email, or via the website. We will try to find any book, even
if out of print.
History
We are
often asked what happened at 10-11 Blacklands Terrace before John Sandoe’s
arrival. According to Dirk Bogarde, no 10 was ‘a seedy little tobacconist’
before the war. The shop was said by John to have been occupied during the war
by ‘a man who sold antiquities to Popes and people in those big hats’ –
although why Popes and people in huge, flaunting bonnets should have
congregated in Blacklands Terrace in those days sadly remains a mystery.
Downstairs was ‘a poodle parlour’, the charmingly named ‘Chloe of Chelsea’, and
upstairs (our paperback room) was a secretarial agency. No 11 was a dress shop:
our stock room still had the mirror on the wall until 2014. Soon after the war,
Tom and Ros Chatto took over the ground floor of no 10 as a secondhand bookshop.
The Chattos’ neighbour at no 12 was a vet, Anthony O’Neill. He looked after
Churchill’s dogs, and he was there until 2013.
John Sandoe
opened the shop on November 11th, 1957. His intention, which remains a fair
description of what we still try to do, was to offer his selection of the best
current books and to obtain any other books he might be asked for. His
grandmother was shocked because he did not have blinds to pull down over the
windows on Sundays. From the outset, he had a colleague, Felicité Gwynn, who
was Elizabeth David’s sister. Felicité was remembered for many years for her
contempt of those she regarded as fools as well as her formative influence on
their reading. ‘She loved selling books and was liable to throw them at people
on occasion in exasperation,’ said John. ‘But they would apologise to her, not
her to them.’ She left in 1984.
John died
in 2007, but he had retired from the bookshop because of ill health in 1989,
selling it to Stewart Grimshaw, and to John (‘Seán’) Wyse Jackson and Johnny de
Falbe, who had worked for John since 1979 and 1986 respectively. Seán left in
2003 to return to Ireland, four years after Dan Fenton had become a partner (he
began working for Sandoe’s in 1992). Dan left in 2015.
In 2013 the
venerable Mr O’Neill retired from the vet next door and we were able to acquire
the lease. With careful planning we were able to remain open throughout the
eighteen months that it took to gut and renovate the entire premises, rolling
the three units into a single shop. Although the floor space is in fact only
increased by about one third, the shop feels spacious and light. Nevertheless,
we are told that the atmosphere has not changed, and that Verlyn Klinkenborg’s
glorious description of 2010 remains true:
“In a
sense, John Sandoe Books Ltd looks like it belongs somewhere else in London,
though perhaps not any actual London. There’s something uplifting and
phosphorescent about the place, its windows and staircases crammed with books,
one genre fading into the next, the occasional sense that the shelving here has
been done by free association. .. the books at John Sandoe seem to belong to an
extensive cousinage, a kinship of ink. It’s one of the few bookshops I’ve ever
visited that made me feel I’d be happy reading any book on its shelves…. John
Sandoe Books…made me feel discerning and capacious as a reader. But it did
something even stranger. It made me proud to be a writer. If I lived in London,
I could have a bad day at work—sentences eroding, paragraphs falling apart,
word after word evading my memory—and it would all be made better by a short
walk among the titles at John Sandoe Books, where only a short walk is ever
possible. The books would look up at me and smile, knowingly.”
We have
about 30,000 books here, of which almost all are single copies.
We would
like to thank James Campbell for his kind permission to use his artwork on this
website; also to Marzena Pogorzaly and Arabella von Friesen for their
photographs; and to Ben John for his drawing. Copyright is retained in all
cases by the artist.
Our
grateful thanks too to Ilya Levantis for his help in building the site.
Testimonials
John
Sandoe is an integral part of my life in London. It is quite simply the best
bookshop anyone could wish for.
Edna
O’Brien
The
absolute love of books which this shop engenders is hugely joyous.
Dirk
Bogarde
Sandoes…
is short of space and therefore must stock discriminately, but the tabletop of
new and recent books offers the best browse in London.
Sir Tom
Stoppard
I’ll
drop in to John Sandoe, a bookshop off the King’s Road that has great art and
design editions
Luciano
Giubbilei
My
favourite bookshop is John Sandoe… [where] you can say: “What’s this book
like?” and they will tell you, either because they’ve read it, or they know
somebody who has.
Sir Richard
Eyre
John
Sandoes is, and always will be, THE best bookshop in London.
Alain de
Botton
The best
bookshop in London … is the divine John Sandoe
Philip
Hensher
You’ll
find plentiful prize bats in this glorious belfry!
John Cleese
If I ask
for something in particular, the staff here will always find it for me. It is
still the best bookshop in the world and has books that no-one else has.
Manolo
Blahnik
I would
like Father Christmas to pay my permanent account at John Sandoe Bookshop
Kathleen
Tynan
John
Sandoe …is a bookworm’s dream… the perfect bookshop in which to browse, where
staff delight in making intelligent recommendations based on books you have
read and enjoyed.
Terence
Conran
A recent
“find” is John Sandoe, a three-floor independent bookshop crammed with fiction,
biography and coffee-table tomes on absolutely everything; I could spend hours
there.
Nina
Campbell
1 comment:
The shop looks fantastic from the outside... very well renovated to preserve its original style. And as long as the book shop has chairs for reading in, I am a happy camper.
But are most patrons elderly these days? I offered to give a bookshop gift certificate to the grandchildren for their birthdays, but they don't read anything that isn't on-line.
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