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Foyles
W & G Foyle Ltd. (usually called simply Foyles) 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 , and for number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018. Foyles was famed in the past for its anachronistic, eccentric and sometimes infuriating business practices; so much so that it became a tourist attraction. It has since modernised, and has opened several branches and an online store. Founding and early branches Brothers William and Gilbert Foyle founded the business in 1903. After failing entrance exams for the civil service, the brothers offered their redundant textbooks for sale and were inundated by offers. This inspired them to launch a second-hand book business from home. Flushed with success, they opened a small shop on Station Parade in Queen's Road, Pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foyles Building
The Foyles Building at 111–119 Charing Cross Road and 1–12 Manette Street, London, was the flagship store of the Foyles bookshop chain from 1929 to 2014, and at one time, the world's largest bookshop. The business moved next door to 107–109 Charing Cross Road in 2014, in a redevelopment of the old Saint Martin's School of Art building. The building was demolished in 2017. History The building was designed by the architects F. Taperell and H. Haase and built from 1927 before opening in 1929. It was at one time claimed to be the world's largest bookshop. William Foyle stated that it was "the world's first purpose-built bookshop", (although this is disputed), as well as the world's largest. In 1932, on hearing that the Nazis were burning books, William Foyle sent Adolf Hitler a telegram asking if he could buy them instead. During the Second World War, to safeguard the store from the effects of the Blitz, sandbags filled with old books were used, and the roof was "covered" wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christina Foyle
Christina Agnes Lilian Foyle (30 January 1911 – 8 June 1999) was an English bookseller and owner of Foyles bookshop. Early life 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. At the age of seventeen, after leaving a Swiss finishing school, Christina Foyle started working at her father's bookshop, and never left. She was the only one of Foyle’s three children who made a career in the business. The Right Book Club republished titles with conservative and classical liberal themes. 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 unioni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Waterstones
Waterstones, formerly Waterstone's, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products. Established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone, after whom the company was named, the bookseller expanded rapidly until being sold in 1993 to WHSmith. In 1998, Waterstones was bought by a consortium of Waterstone, EMI and Advent International. The company was taken under the umbrella of HMV Group, which later merged the Dillons and Ottakar's brands into the company. Following several poor sets of results for the group, HMV put the chain up for sale. In May 2011, it was announced that A&NN Capital Fund Management, owned by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut, had bought the chain for £53.5m and appointed James Daunt as managing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Foyle
William Alfred Westropp Foyle (1885–1963) was a British bookseller and businessman who co-founded Foyles bookshop in 1903 with his brother Gilbert Foyle. William Foyle was one of the leading London booksellers of the 20th century. In 1903 he opened his first bookshop with his brother Gilbert and by the late 1920s the business had grown so rapidly that their bookstore in Charing Cross Road held a stock of four million volumes on over thirty miles of bookshelves, and the name of Foyle had become synonymous with bookselling in London. His vision for the business was a bookshop for the world - for every one from any station in life - "The People's Bookshop". His inspiration was James Lackington's late 18th century "Temple of Muses" at Chiswell Street, London. The Foyle brothers were determined to create the greatest bookshop in the world. Foyles became increasingly popular with customers and members of the public throughout the world. In 1930, Foyle's nineteen-year-old daught ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes 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. History Charing Cross road was originally two narrow streets in the West End, Crown Street and Castle Street. The development of Regent Street (parallel to the west) in the mid-18th century coincided with not only the building up of great fields west of the area but also Westminster Bridge which was built as central London and the wider estuary's second bridge after more than a century of pressure, in 1750. These pressures therefore congested the north–south axis of the inner West End almost as much as the relieved London Bridge area. Specifically a major increase in traffic occurred around Piccadill ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes 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. History Charing Cross road was originally two narrow streets in the West End, Crown Street and Castle Street. The development of Regent Street (parallel to the west) in the mid-18th century coincided with not only the building up of great fields west of the area but also Westminster Bridge which was built as central London and the wider estuary's second bridge after more than a century of pressure, in 1750. These pressures therefore congested the north–south axis of the inner West End almost as much as the relieved London Bridge area. Specifically a major increase in traffic occurred around Piccadilly Ci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manette Street
Manette Street is a small street in the Soho area of London, linking the Charing Cross Road to Greek Street. Dating from the 1690s, and formerly named Rose Street, it is now named after the fictional character of Dr Manette in Charles Dickens's ''A Tale of Two Cities'', who is described in the book as living on a quiet street corner "not far from Soho Square". Buildings on the street include the Pillars of Hercules pub. The House of St Barnabas has a chapel and garden facing onto Manette Street, and an entrance to The Borderline nightclub is accessed from Manette Street. The street was home to the now-demolished Foyles Building and also Goldbeater's House, which had an arm-and-hammer sign outside it, a replica of the original described by Dickens in ''A Tale of Two Cities''. The street was associated with anarchism in the 19th century, in particular in association with the Rose Street Club The Rose Street Club (sometimes the International Rose Street Club and earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Court
Cecil Court is a pedestrian street with Victorian shop-frontages in Westminster, England, linking Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane. Since the 1930s, it has been known as the new Booksellers' Row. Early background One of the older thoroughfares in Covent Garden, Cecil Court dates to the end of the 17th century and earlier maps clearly identify a hedgerow running down the street's course. A tradesman's route at its inception, it much later acquired the nickname "Flicker Alley" from the concentration of early film companies in the Court. It is now known as home to some twenty antiquarian and second-hand independent bookshops, including specialists in modern first editions, collectible children's books, early printing, rare maps and atlases, antique prints, theatrical ephemera, and esoterica, as well as a contemporary art gallery, an antiques shop, shops specialising in antique silver, militaria, numismatics, and art deco jewellery. The street is sometimes nicknamed "Booksell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Union Of South Africa
The Union of South Africa ( nl, Unie van Zuid-Afrika; af, Unie van Suid-Afrika; ) was the historical predecessor to the present-day Republic of South Africa. It came into existence on 31 May 1910 with the unification of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River colonies. It included the territories that were formerly a part of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. Following World War I, the Union of South Africa was a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and became one of the founding members of the League of Nations. It was conferred the administration of South West Africa (now known as Namibia) as a League of Nations mandate. It became treated in most respects as another province of the Union, but it never was formally annexed. Like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Union of South Africa was a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Its full sovereignty was confirmed with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the Statute of Westminster 1931. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soho Foyles Bookshop 1
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park. It became a parish in its own right in the late 17th century, when buildings started to be developed for the upper class, including the laying out of Soho Square in the 1680s. St Anne's Church, Soho, St Anne's Church was established during the late 17th century, and remains a significant local landmark; other churches are the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory and St Patrick's Church, Soho Square, St Patrick's Church in Soho Square. The aristocracy had mostly moved away by the mid-19th century, when Soho was particularly badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. For much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation as a base for the sex industry in additio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Town
Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest (after Johannesburg). Colloquially named the ''Mother City'', it is the largest city of the Western Cape province, and is managed by the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality. The other two capitals are Pretoria, the executive capital, located in Gauteng, where the Presidency is based, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital in the Free State, where the Supreme Court of Appeal is located. Cape Town is ranked as a Beta world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point. Cape Town is home to 66% of the Western Cape's population. In 2014, Cape Town was named the best place ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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