'Peculiarly hilarious!' - William Gibson
'Every page is a pleasure' - Lindsey FItzharris
'Utterly charming' - Tom Holland
'Laugh-out-loud' - Garth Nix
'A must read' - Fergus Butler-Gallie
'Brims with self-effacing charm' - Caitlin Doughty
'Unfortunately I have mislaid the book in question' - Neil Gaiman

Welcome to Sotheran's, one of the oldest bookshops in the world, with its weird and wonderful clientele, suspicious cupboards, unlabelled keys, poisoned books and some things that aren't even books, presided over by one deeply eccentric apprentice.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, he was soon balancing teetering stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows and trying not to upset the store's resident ghost (the late Mr Sotheran, hit by a tram).

Darkshire came to love Sotheran's, not just for its illustrious history (or for producing the most cursed book of all time), but also its joyous disorganization and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff, whose mere glance may cause a computer to burst into flames.

By turns unhinged and earnestly dog-eared, Once Upon a Tome is the rather colourful story of life in one of the world's oldest bookshops and a love letter to the benign, unruly world of antiquarian bookselling.

• We started tracking this book on October 23, 2022.
• This book was £7.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 8 times in the past 929 days.
• The current price of this book is £9.49 last checked 7 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past year.
• The lowest price to date was £5.99 last reached on August 30, 2023.
• This book has been £5.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was £10.00 last reached on July 16, 2024.
• This book has been £10.00 one time since we started tracking it.

• Biography & True AccountsBiography

• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 243 Pages
• File Size: 114 KB