The Last Bookshop

[Merkin]

The Last Bookshop is a charming short film that imagines a future in which bookshops have all but disappeared (not so hard to imagine, eh?). The film tells the tale of a boy who stumbles upon the last remaining bookshop and falls in love...

[Merkin]

Oops. Sorry. Hit the wrong button.

[Jeff Ellis]

Absolutely delightful... do watch it!

It is so wonderfully English. The idea that in the distant future well behaved schoolboys will still wear a school blazer and pullover gives one hope. The fact that the guiding hand is called Richard Dadd is an (accidental) wonderful touch.

[Camy]

Marvelous! A warm, elegiac, and thoroughly English lament for books and bookshops (not to mention old duffers and pince-nez).

The site is well worth browsing, too: http://thelastbookshop.wordpress.com/

Thank you James.

[Merkin]

That link to the blog site, Camy, is ace. Reading it through gave the whole film additional meaning and context, and a wonderful set of glimpses behind the scenery of the production. The Boy off-camera is even more delightful. I want the Dalek.

[Chris James]

Yes, thank you, James...a sweet little video and a good website revealed. A cautionary tale as well, books should never become obsolete.

Old bookstores fascinate and as a young teenager I spent weeks of my youth in just such a place. I am unsure if this store was still in the old F Street location back then, but W.H. Lowdermilk Company was a fabulous place to find books from the past, and they were not expensive.

Founded in 1872, three floors and a basement archive of old books unrivaled in Washington, D.C. Stockpiling items from pre-Civil War days, the true wealth of that store was not discovered until it was forced to close in 1969 by progress (The Metro Subway system construction).

Original undiscovered treasures included presidential documents from Lincoln and several others, unseen glass plates of photographs taken by Matthew Brady. I keep telling myself if I had just dug a little deeper, looked a little harder, what wonderful things I could have found. As it is I still have my first editions of Pearl Buck The Good Earth and several other tomes of wisdom. Good memories.