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Pamela Beasant on Stromness Books & Prints, Slightly Foxed Issue 76, Iain Ashman

A Northern Survivor

Nestled in the heart of Orkney’s second largest town, on a main street uncoiling, as the Orcadian poet and writer George Mackay Brown described it, ‘like a sailor’s rope’, Stromness Books & Prints has sev­eral claims to fame. It’s the UK’s most northerly independent bookshop, and it’s ‘Scotland’s only drive-in bookshop’, as claimed by Tam MacPhail, who ran the business for many years. (This claim is based on the fact that the main street is narrow enough for drivers to stop outside the shop, open the window, shout a request through the door and be served without leaving the car.)

Another claim to fame is its survival; no mean feat in a time of online shopping and a global pandemic. It’s more than just a shop in a small town. For businesses to embed here, they have to become part of the community; they offer something that can’t be ordered online or found in a mainstream outlet. What the bookshop offers is the accumulated and eclectic knowledge of the successive owners (only four) since the shop opened its doors in 1970. It’s a kind of magical threshold, where you discover things you never imagined, and end up reading something obscure and wonderful, because it’s there, or because the current owner Sheena recommends it.

And one of the most important things about the business is the way it is handed on. No adverts or interviews – it’s a much more mysterious process. The bookshop has to be earned over time, and the new owner is chosen by the current one in a long, organic period of ‘growing into it’, which has nothing to do with experience or qualifications, but everything to do with what goes on inside the person’s head, their passion for reading and how they come to fit the shape of the chair behind the counter.

The founder of the shop was Charles Senior, poet, who at first sold only second-hand books, including some rare and valuable antiquarian volumes. Senior was a friend and confidant of George Mackay Bro

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Nestled in the heart of Orkney’s second largest town, on a main street uncoiling, as the Orcadian poet and writer George Mackay Brown described it, ‘like a sailor’s rope’, Stromness Books & Prints has sev­eral claims to fame. It’s the UK’s most northerly independent bookshop, and it’s ‘Scotland’s only drive-in bookshop’, as claimed by Tam MacPhail, who ran the business for many years. (This claim is based on the fact that the main street is narrow enough for drivers to stop outside the shop, open the window, shout a request through the door and be served without leaving the car.)

Another claim to fame is its survival; no mean feat in a time of online shopping and a global pandemic. It’s more than just a shop in a small town. For businesses to embed here, they have to become part of the community; they offer something that can’t be ordered online or found in a mainstream outlet. What the bookshop offers is the accumulated and eclectic knowledge of the successive owners (only four) since the shop opened its doors in 1970. It’s a kind of magical threshold, where you discover things you never imagined, and end up reading something obscure and wonderful, because it’s there, or because the current owner Sheena recommends it. And one of the most important things about the business is the way it is handed on. No adverts or interviews – it’s a much more mysterious process. The bookshop has to be earned over time, and the new owner is chosen by the current one in a long, organic period of ‘growing into it’, which has nothing to do with experience or qualifications, but everything to do with what goes on inside the person’s head, their passion for reading and how they come to fit the shape of the chair behind the counter. The founder of the shop was Charles Senior, poet, who at first sold only second-hand books, including some rare and valuable antiquarian volumes. Senior was a friend and confidant of George Mackay Brown. The two men met in Edinburgh when the latter was at Edinburgh University, part of the extraordinary group of poets and writers who haunted Milne’s Bar in Rose Street. They corresponded weekly until Charles Senior moved to Stromness in 1968. He handed on the bookshop to his friend John Broom (whose name can still be seen above the door), a librarian, also an old friend of GMB’s, who moved to the islands in the early Seventies and introduced a new range of little Pelican books. When John was offered the post of librarian in Stromness Library, he handed the business to Tam MacPhail, a sculptor originally from California, who had been work­ing in the bookshop since 1976. (Tam started selling maps along with the books and restored the original name of Stromness Books & Prints.) Finally, in 2014, Tam handed the business to Sheena Winter, who grew up in Edinburgh but has strong Orkney roots, and who had been working with him since 1998. Sheena has made it her own, although Tam appeared regularly until his death in 2020, and the shop is often still called simply ‘Tam’s’ by locals. That’s the succession in a nutshell, but behind it is a bigger story, of course, to do with the four bookshop owners, their interwoven lives in the community, and the place itself. Outwardly, central Stromness has changed little since its first beginnings. From the pierhead, the main street undulates for around five hundred metres until it reaches the Point of Ness overlooking Hoy Sound, with the little island of Graemsay in the foreground, and the Hoy hills looming behind; a benign and protective barrier against the restless Pentland Firth. It’s the best view in Orkney. In Stromness, the ferry to the Scottish mainland comes and goes daily, punctuating the days and the lives of the 1,800 inhabitants. The rumble of its engines can be felt right through the foundations of the stone houses, and it’s comforting to feel it and know the ferry is in. The town has always been a busy place, from the days of whaling and the Hudson’s Bay Company in the nineteenth century, when Canada-bound ships put into Stromness for water and supplies and employed Orcadians as sailors or as trappers, traders and cartographers in the far north. And it’s as busy as ever today. Alongside the traditional mix of fishermen, farmers, teachers and shopkeepers, the town is one of the most innovative centres of renewable energy in the world. It also has a cutting-edge creative community, and archaeolo­gists who are attracted by Orkney’s world-renowned Neolithic and Norse sites. Long-established businesses include Flett’s the butcher, Argo’s bakery (now housing the Post Office), the North End Garage, Sinclair’s fishing tackle and gift shop, Wishart’s hardware shop, the Waterfront Gallery, the Quernstone, Sinclair’s Office Supplies and Julia’s café. And new businesses have sprung up more recently, offer­ing gallery space, diving equipment, toys, gifts, groceries and take- away food. You can find just about anything in Stromness, if you know where to look. In amongst it all, the bookshop has not only survived but thrived. And it’s done this in a tiny space, with no running water and no toilet. Two customers fit in the shop comfortably, three’s a bit of a squash. There are books from floor to ceiling, and the clientele varies from tourists looking for maps, guides or a good holiday read, to locals who are fiercely loyal and resist the call of Amazon. George Mackay Brown, who lived nearby in an ex-council house, was a close friend of Tam and his wife, the Swedish-born photographer and artist Gunnie Moberg. George and Gunnie produced many books, including a few they collaborated on, and all can be found in the bookshop. (The beautiful book Orkney: Pictures and Poems came about when Gunnie fed images to George, which he propped up in front of him and responded to. Gunnie had initially asked for captions, but he produced a significant series of poems.) There are also books about the extraordinary history of Orkney, its unique bird and wildlife, folklore and mythology; books on philosophy, religion and politics; and there’s a whole children’s sec­tion and a wonderful poetry and contemporary literature collection, including every interesting writer you can think of and many volumes and limited editions by local authors. A canny and discreet expansion of the bookshop can be found in the Pier Arts Centre, just a couple of hundred metres north up the street. The gallery is a tale in itself, housing a permanent collection by St Ives artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, gifted by Margaret Gardiner in the 1970s. The collection has grown over the years so that it’s now one of the most significant in the UK, and there are temporary exhibitions by some of the most exciting and innovative contemporary artists. In the foyer, with the cards and gifts, is an impressive collection of art books under the auspices of Stromness Books & Prints. The business was built by Tam over many years, and in the shop his presence can still be felt. He was an extraordinary man – a gifted artist (although the bookshop took up most of his time) with an intense, quietly restless mental energy. Some were a bit scared of him; he could be unreadable, and his sense of humour was very particular. He had a quirky, creative turn of mind. But Tam was also a man of huge kindness and generosity who inspired great loyalty; he was utterly devoted to his wife Gunnie and their four sons and he forged many close friendships locally. When Gunnie died in 2007 he was never quite the same again, and when his own health began to fail, there was a sense of disbelief that old age and infirmity could be applied to Tam; he had always seemed ageless and agile, mentally and physically. There was something other about him; a kind of magic. When he died, during the lockdown in 2020, there was a huge out­pouring of sadness. Many people lined the streets when his wicker coffin was driven past the bookshop, where it paused for people to raise a glass and say their goodbyes. The sense of the significance of the loss was shared by all. In the recently built Warehouse Buildings at the Pierhead, housing Stromness Library, an enormous portrait of Tam, by local artist and friend Calum Morrison, dominates the main staircase. He’s painted behind the counter of the shop, with books gloriously in flight all around his head, Chagall-like. At the still centre, Tam looks out with a characteristically enigmatic expression. It provokes a jolt of sadness now that he’s gone – but also recognition of how truthfully the paint­ing catches him. Over the past few years, Sheena has discreetly brought the busi­ness into the twenty-first century. Until recently, the bookshop didn’t accept card payments, only cash or cheques. (And Tam didn’t believe in giving a penny change; locals learned not to ask for it.) Sheena now stocks national book tokens, but you can still buy exclusive bookshop ones, hand-made from old cards, with the amount written in silver or gold pen with an added ‘valid forever’. (If you don’t spend it all, Sheena crosses out the amount and writes what’s left under­neath. Brilliant.) She has kept the Tam-infused feel and integrity of the space, but there’s an ever-changing, dynamic stock, more choice on how to pay, and she will source obscure or out-of-print books online, order them in and charge only what she paid. Sheena simply loves books, and she wants people to be able to get them in whatever way possible. And this is the key to the bookshop’s success. It’s never been run as a business first. From a tiny space, in a small town in the far north, it’s been run with community-embedded, outward-look­ing intelligence, with multi-layered curiosity about the world and its wonderful literature, and, above all, it’s been run with love. It’s a survivor, and, as Larkin said, ‘what will survive of us is love’.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 76 © Pamela Beasant 2022


About the contributor

Pamela Beasant is a poet, author and playwright. Originally from Glasgow, she has been living in Stromness, Orkney, for many years.

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