From the off, the shop inspired staggering loyalty in its staff and customers. Soon after Hill retired in 1965, John Saumerez Smith was hired to run it, and did so for 43 years.
When Heywood Hill needed a buyer in 1991, the Duke of Devonshire, who’d always been a customer, bought the shop and owns it to this day. The bookshop, which specialises in rare books and the creation of private libraries for individual customers all over the world, is said to have been one of the late Queen’s favourites.
As Heywood Hill’s chairman Nicky Dunne told Vanity Fair: ‘It’s a very nourishing place to spend time.’ Here, we list the ways we love it.
ONE
We love that Nancy Mitford – one of the UK’s best loved novelists – worked there from 1942 to 1945, helping to run the shop while Hill himself was fighting abroad. According to The Times, she forgot ‘one night to lock up and arrived the next morning to discover the place ‘full of wandering people trying to buy books from each other’’. In a letter to her mother, she wrote: ‘By the mercy of Providence Heywood was passing through London & happened to look in HE WASN’T BEST PLEASED. And I don’t blame him.’
TWO
We love the blue grosgrain ribbon that ties up every package and always has.
THREE
We love their ‘A Year in Books’ scheme, in which every month you are sent a book that has been carefully chosen for you. Throughout the year, you build up a collection of brilliant books and your reading life is enriched. It is the most personalised book subscription service in the world and makes a truly amazing present. Because Heywood Hill’s dedicated team of bibliophiles reads over 500 books a year, they are experts at helping customers find the books that are just right for them.
FOUR
We love their tenacity. While independent booksellers panic and close all around us, Heywood Hill keeps a cool head and sails on regally through the 21st century. It is vanishingly rare in 2022 for a successful brand not to sell its wares online. Heywood Hill does not sell its books online – and somehow makes the omission work. (Incidentally, you can buy bundles, subscriptions, a few select gifts and gift cards through the website.)
FIVE
We love that it is a family business. The Duke of Devonshire, Nancy Mitford’s brother-in-law, bought the shop in 1991; his son took ownership in 2004; and his son-in-law, Nicky Dunne, has been chairman since 2011.
SIX
We love that a visit to the shop IRL is like a step back in time. The world of Heywood Hill is a world that values beauty, words and literary enrichment. As Dunne told Mr Porter: ‘If you want a refuge from the screen, and the constant noise of the digital world, then a room full of books creates a very beautiful sanctuary.’
SEVEN
We love that the novelist Evelyn Waugh described Heywood Hill as ‘a centre for all that was left of fashionable and intellectual London’.
EIGHT
We love that Heywood Hill, that small British bastion, has always had a place in the hearts of east coast Americans. When dry rot was found in the basement of the shop, a coterie of society ladies from Manhattan – including Bunny Mellon, Brooke Astor and Jacqueline Onassis – clubbed together to pay for the repairs.
NINE
We love that the shop occupies two floors of the same Georgian townhouse in which it began life.
TEN
We love that Heywood Hill says: ‘If we have a specialisation, it is in our devotion to customer service and in striving never to let our customers down.’
By Becky Ladenburg
December 2022
