The Diary of a Bookseller

Thursday, 24 April: An elderly customer told me that her book club’s next book was Dracula, but she couldn’t remember what he’d written.

Meet Shaun Bythell, bookshop owner, bibliophile and misanthrope extraordinaire. He lives and works in The Bookshop. Wigtown, whose crooked shelves contain anything from a sixteenth-century Bible to a first-edition Agatha Christie. A booklover’s paradise? Well, almost ..

In Shaun’s honest and wryly hilarious diaries, he reveals the highs and lows of life in the book trade, as he contends with eccentric customers, bin-foraging employees and a perennially empty till.

Along the way he’ll take you on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommend lost classics – and introduce you to the thrill of the unexpected find.