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One of Britain's largest stocks of second-hand books ever amassed

Richard Axe is celebrated in the bookselling trade for his vast collection of antiquarian and second-hand volumes. Since 2005, his stock has been arrayed on over a mile’s worth of shelving in a former youth hostel in the Yorkshire Dales, but now his career is approaching its coda

In the past, you might have traipsed round bookshops for a lifetime not finding the missing piece in your authorial jigsaw, but often such editions previously thought rare can now be quite easily unearthed via online search engines, and so their value has slumped. When Richard moved to his property in 2005, consolidating a warehouse, shop and large house in Harrogate, little structural work was required to the sturdily built edifice apart from new guttering, though he had to strip out rows of urinals and a few municipal-style kitchens. Even as a Dulwich College scholarship boy, ‘I collected stamps rather more avidly than most.’ Later, at Bristol University, ‘I bought books initially to read, but the physical possession of having quite a lot, of having a substantial range of bookshelves, became important as a manifestation of knowledge and understanding and culture.’ Even now, he can find himself transfixed when, say, a history of signposts tumbles into his lap.

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