Goodbye Woodstock Bookshop

The last secondhand bookshop in Woodstock has closed, I learned today. I had parked my car on Park Street, about 250m from the Co-Op, and so walked past the Woodstock Bookshop for the first time in a week. I saw that the small shop was almost empty of books, and on going to the front door, which is in an alleyway that leads down to Princeton University Press's UK office and I think perhaps some flats, I read a handwritten notice that announced:

'This bookshop is closed from today, 1st April. Thank you and farewell.'

I gather that a few years ago there were three secondhand bookshops in Woodstock. As I moved here three years ago, there were two, and one, Bladon Books, closed before I could see it; its space became overflow from an estate agents' office and I think is now a Vietnamese goods shop. Now the Woodstock Bookshop is gone. Its stock had a heavy bias towards literary criticism, and little history, and in the last year they had closed their upstairs, removing their old paperback department. I've bought a few things there over the years, mainly out of print historical books; my sister has liked to visit it too. I presume it has been killed by a combination of rising rents and the internet book trade.