The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill 1952-73

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On reading Algy Cluff's first volume, Get On With It, Tom Stoppard remarked that the author's subsequent book should be titled ‘The Importance of Being Algy’ Alison Flood (30 September 2016). "Prize of a lifetime: London bookshop offers free books for the rest of your life | Books". The Guardian . Retrieved 11 July 2017.

Over the years he took on a series of poorly remunerated but bookish assistants, many of whom, inspired by his traditional approach to book-selling, went on to make their own names in the independent book trade. John’s paternal great-grandfather, William Saumarez Smith, was the Primate of Australia, while his great-great-great grandfather, Joseph Smith, was William Pitt’s private secretary. On his mother’s side his grandfather was the theologian Canon Charles Raven, who became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Master of Christ’s College and vice-chancellor of the university. Heywood Hill is a bookshop at 10 Curzon Street in the Mayfair district of London. [1] History [ edit ]

Robin Birley is a unique and wonderful Mayfair figure who whose family have been Heywood Hill supporters for generations,” Dunne says of one of London’s most admired—and socially connected—entrepreneurs. Birley’s late father, Mark, was the founder of the club Annabel’s, itself named for Birley’s alluring mother Lady Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, a marquess’s daughter who famously went on to wed financier Sir James Goldsmith. His grandfather Sir Oswald Birley was one of high society’s most celebrated portraitists in the first half of the 20th century, and his father’s sister was Loulou de la Falaise, Yves Saint Laurent’s right-hand woman. As for Birley himself, like his father, he is an connoisseur of art and antiques who has founded a handful of admired private clubs, among them 5 Hertford Street, where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly had their first date, and Oswald’s, an elegant wine club that opened last year. He’s presently eyeing clubbable outposts in New York City. He would often put aside a copy of a book he thought might appeal to a particular customer, and those who lived abroad – or in rural seclusion – depended on him to send them the best of recently publications. “He possesses the uncanny ability,” observed a transatlantic admirer in The New York Times, “to send out of the blue the exact book one’s been wishing for, so closely does he follow his customers’ interests and development.” For London’s Artemis Fund Managers, chair John Dodd wanted a library that would inspire his partners and associates in freedom of thought. “Thinking independently is a defining strand of the DNA of the partnership,” Dunne explains. Heywood Hill’s concept was simple and yet provocative, what Dunne describes as “a readers’ library that captures capitalism in all its layers and colors: the heroes, the villains, the groundbreakers, the headbangers, people with good ideas and bad, those who innovated and those whose ideas were in fact dead ends, people who moved markets in the past and who are moving them in the present.” One day a student rushed in and explained that he had just come from a wonderful lecture and urgently needed a copy of a book entitled The Phytosociology and Ecology of Cryptogamic Epiphytes. Saumarez Smith established that it was published by John Wiley, cost 63 shillings, and would be there in two weeks’ time. A few minutes later another equally breathless student came in, looking “for a book called …” Throughout his lifetime John devoted his considerable intellectual energies to sifting the literary wheat from the chaff, in search of the beautiful, the important or the plain enjoyable.

Located in a snug Georgian townhouse, Heywood Will was close to the St James’s Club, a private gentleman’s club mostly home to authors and diplomats (including one Ian Fleming) who were dazzled by Nancy's charm. She wrote that her customers loved standing “bosom to bosom” with her. Some would buy books, some would just want to flirt with a Mitford sister; either way it brought attention to the shop at a time where every sale mattered. In fact the clientele was drawn from a wider social milieu than what Saumarez Smith referred to as the “carriage trade”. And in his later years he had to put up with a new breed of City trader who came “looking for something flash-looking that costs a lot”.

Algy Cluff OBE was born in 1940. He served for six years in the Army in West Africa, Cyprus and Borneo. A pioneer of North Sea oil exploration, he founded Cluff Oil in 1972. This lead to the discovery of the Buchan Field. There followed thirty years of exploration in the gold industry in Africa and the discovery and development of gold mines. He remains active in the oil business. Algy was the proprietor of The Spectator for five years and its Chairman for a further twenty. He was the proprietor of other magazines, including Apollo and the Literary Review. In 1969 he married Laura, daughter of the architect Raymond Erith, who survives him with their two sons.