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Saunders, Chris

Chris Saunders is the managing director of Henry Sotheran Ltd, the country’s oldest antiquarian bookseller. He is also a freelance writer who has written two small books on Edward Thomas, numerous articles and a couple of poems. He runs the literary blog Speaks Volumes. You can hear him discussing the world of antiquarian and second-hand bookselling in our podcast, Episode 12, ‘Slightly Foxed – But Still Desirable’.

The numbers in square brackets refer to the issue of the quarterly in which the article appears.
The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons

articles by, [56] 71; [61] 34; [64] 18; [69] 69; [73] 36

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20230301110750 Bookshop of the Quarter, Sotherans

Bookshop of the Quarter: Spring 2023

Chris Saunders is the managing director of Henry Sotheran Ltd, the country’s oldest antiquarian bookseller. He is also a freelance writer who has written two small books on Edward Thomas, numerous articles and a couple of poems. He runs the literary blog Speaks Volumes. You can hear him discussing the world of antiquarian and second-hand bookselling in our podcast, Episode 12, ‘Slightly Foxed – But Still Desirable’.  Here he gives us a personal tour of Sotheran’s and shares his recommended reads, dream bookshop party guests and favourite Slightly Foxed publication.
20220301110039 Chris Saunders on Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop, SF Issue 73

The Art of Bookselling

Chris Saunders, Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

Just as most good books aren’t really about the things they say they are, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop (1978) isn’t really about a bookshop. It’s about English insularity, politics, the misuse of power and the headstrong persistence of hope, with Florence Green’s Suffolk bookshop a symbol for every newcomer who ever found their best intentions beaten down by suspicion and hidebound tradition. At the end of the book, the formidable local matriarch Mrs Gamart manipulates her MP nephew into pushing through Parliament a bill specifically designed to close down Florence’s shop in favour of a local arts centre. The arts centre is Mrs Gamart’s pet project, and the town of Hardborough falls into line behind her. Florence has to con­clude that ‘the town in which she had lived for nearly ten years had not wanted a bookshop’. That is the last line of a book about a book­shop. An upbeat ending it is not.
20191201124027

Thames Valley Blues

Chris Saunders on Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude

Patrick Hamilton, now best known for his novel Hangover Square and the play Gaslight, was a troubled man who is often seen as the court poet of shabby alcoholics and wandering drunkards. He is, however, also the bard of a particular area west of London, that part of the Thames valley that extends from just beyond Slough to Reading, where his characters often go to seek refuge from the excesses of the city. This is a strange hinterland of pretty villages and small towns occupied largely by people who work in London, places that are eerily quiet during the week (apart from the air traffic from Heathrow, which of course Hamilton knew nothing about) and yet vitally attached to the metropolis.
20191015093024 Foxed Podcast Episode 12 Sotherans

Episode 12: Slightly Foxed – But Still Desirable

The Slightly Foxed Podcast

Gail, Hazel and host Philippa enter the world of second-hand bookselling with Chris Saunders of Henry Sotheran’s, the world’s oldest antiquarian bookshop. From folios to quartos, half-binding to cockling, foxing to forgery, they tackle trade terminology and share tales of rarities and curiosities. The conversation ranges far and wide in the typical Slightly Foxed manner – from Parisian romances and the libraries of English country houses to outsized ornithological specimens and books of unusual provenance. In this month’s wander through the magazine’s archives Nigel Anthony recounts the tale of a bookseller’s quest for bibliophilic bliss in a sleepy corner of the Cotswolds, and there’s the usual round-up of recommended reading from off the beaten track.
20190301130050 Chris Saunders on Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring - Slightly Foxed Issue 61

Springtime Reflections

Chris Saunders on Edward Thomas, In Pursuit of Spring

You can almost smell the sylvan air, and this is one of Thomas’s attractions. Born in the suburbs, his love of nature drove his devout wish to escape the noise and chaos of London. Like him, I have moved to the sticks and I feel he is speaking for me when he writes: Many days in London have no weather. We are aware only that it is hot or cold, dry or wet; that we are in or out of doors; that we are at ease or not. But Thomas’s writing is more than pastoral escapism. He often turns his retreat to the country into an assessment of himself and this is where In Pursuit of Spring becomes spooky, funny and also strangely wise...
20171201112224 Robert Francis - Chris Saunders on Travelling in Amherst

A Different Kind of Wealth

Chris Saunders on Robert Francis, Travelling in Amherst

As a rather romantic young man in my early twenties, I longed for a retreat, a cabin by a lake where I could learn to understand nature and write reams of lapidary poetry. Of course this never came to pass, not least because I could no more build a habitable hut than I could fly, but the lure of the self-sustaining rural life remains strong. My dream might have been inspired by Henry Thoreau’s Walden, his account of his life in a hut by a pond which remains an icon of American literature. In fact it was a book by another, later American that really inspired me ‒ Robert Francis’s Travelling in Amherst (1986), a copy of which I discovered one day in Hay-on-Wye.

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