Comments on: Marius Webb, Bookseller At Foyles

By: Stefany C Reich-Silber

Stefany C Reich-Silber — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 22:00:24 +0000

Greetings. Did you know Lorka Glucker who worked for Foyles in the 50s and 60s? Maybe longer. The last time I saw her was probably in 1968. She was a a central European woman. She lived on the same street that I lived on and was friends with my central European grandmother and father. She always gave me gift tokens for books as presents. She was a lovely woman.

By: MI6

MI6 — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 17:32:57 +0000

Talking of bookshops – more about this article should be published on Wednesday –

THE YARM BOOKSHOP: AN ESPIONAGE HUB OR SAFE HOUSE?
Who doesn’t yearn to browse around a good old fashioned antiquarian or second hand bookshop? Mind you, one doesn’t have to work for MI6 to realise that bookstores can be pretty daunting, intriguing if not dangerous and spooky places.

There are several bookstores in the USA that are supposed to be spooky, haunted that is, but few if any are renowned for clandestine gatherings of real spooks. In England, arguably the most famous spooky bookshop is at Sarah Key Books or The Haunted Bookshop situated at 9 St Edward’s Passage Cambridge since 1993. Prior to that and from 1896 a Mr G David ran the bookshop in St Edward’s Passage. This quaint shop is less than a third of a mile distant from Trinity College down a tiny alley in the historic heartland of Cambridge. Rumour has it that a genuine ghost resides there.

Apart from being a first class bookshop it was the ghost that made the shop famous but its infamy in espionage history has until today never before been acknowledged. We can confirm that there can be little doubt that members of the Cambridge Five probably bought books at or at the very least visited Mr David’s bookshop in St Edward’s Passage in the 1930s and sauntered past it on frequent occasions on the way to and from the pubs in Bene’t Street and their rooms in Trinity College Cambridge.

Search as you might though, despite being tailor made for espionage, few bookshops have become infamous safe houses, dead drop sites or even spy stations. Maybe that anonymity arises because the bookshop owners were such sophisticated and successful spies. Put another way, would you have heard anything extraordinarily interesting about Kim Philby or Aldrich Ames had they not been exposed?

The most successful antiquarian bookshop we know of that was up to its shelves in espionage was the Yarm Bookshop. For more about this please read the news article dated November 16, 2022 in The Burlington Files website.

By: Cosman Viviane

Cosman Viviane — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 18:08:34 +0000

Hi everybody. By surprised I discovered this article on Foyle’s strike in May 1965 and read with pleasure Marius Webb’s story. I WAS THEREworked at Foyle’s and participated to the strike. I was from Switzerland. But strange, it seems that noone remembers. One day a very big car stopped in front of us and a man asked us what was the reason of the strike. David, one of the striker explained to him. He opened his purse and handed him a big bunch of pounds wishing us good luck in our fight. Does anybody else remembers?

By: Eric Simon

Eric Simon — Fri, 28 Dec 2018 14:50:32 +0000

What a story. I worked for Foyles in 1977 and in terrible conditions. One of the manger was a real pig, whilst another one, a Scottish guy was handling the axe for Christina the unholy lady. I was packing books all day in a small shop opposite Foyles. What an horrific time, every week there was at least four people sacked. I shall never forget some staff crawling in front of Miss Foyles for a happy week end in her beloved country house. Buggers off all thar!

By: Malcolm

Malcolm — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 13:33:36 +0000

Ah, those rose-tinted glasses through which we gaze…
I remember Foyles as being a huge, disorganised mess of overflowing bookshelves, books piled up in every available space, weird people and bad-tempered staff. I remember Christina shouting at a hapless customer who had the temerity to ask her where he might find a particular book. “I’m not staff, I am the OWNER!” Colourful character but completely unsuited to dealing with the common customer! It was an emporium of clutter and chaos that sort of epitomised how things used to be. The paying system was a laugh too, as described. Quite a few shops used the same method of bits of paper shuttled back and forth between counters. There are still some places in Moscow that carry on the custom, mostly food shops.

By: Helen Breen

Helen Breen — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 10:44:03 +0000

Greetings from London,

GA, wonderful piece. Love Maurice’s description of the old haunts on Charing Cross Road.

Missing London today …

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 09:52:57 +0000

Great story. Quirky old Foyles.

By: Paul Ridgway

Paul Ridgway — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 08:26:44 +0000

Down the Ditch the Houndsditch Warehouse (I used to go there lunchtimes from Tower Hill where I worked) had a similar payment system to Foyle’s whereby the customer obtained a chit for the item being purchased, went to a cashier to pay then returned to another point to collect the goods.
Not sure if they ever suffered what the retail trade knows as ‘shrinkage’.

By: Greg Tingey

Greg Tingey — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 06:47:25 +0000

Given that the Foyles were communist sympathisers & certainly had some sort of “deal” with the PRC governement, the whole thing is very curious