"Shopping, seduction and Mr Selfridge" by Lindy Woodhead

I haven't read a book about retailing since, I think, 1967 when I read "My Store of memories" by Rowan Bentall which was published to coincide with the centenary of Bentall's in Kingston Upon Thames.

This book was brilliant.

It starts by describing the retail environment of nineteenth century Chicago where Harry Gordon Selfridge cut his teeth working for 25 years at department store Marshall Field. I was particularly interested by the boom that accompanied the 1893 World Fair, which I have also read about in "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson which intertwines the story of the World Fair with that of the serial killer H. H. Holmes and is well worth a read. I loved the names that Woodhead dropped, people Selfridge knew: Levi Leiter whose daughter Mary married Lord Curzon, Florenz Ziegfield whose son founded the eponymous Follies, skyscraper architect Louis Sullivan, and the father of body-building Eugen Sandow.

Selfridge gets tired of working for other people; he tries retirement and then moves to London to found his own store. His showbiz ways trump the more established retailers (such as Harrods, which began in Stepney of all places!) But as he becomes more successful he becomes increasingly distracted by life outside retailing. He becomes besotted with aeroplanes, exhibiting Bleriot's channel-hopping machine the day after the channel was hopped. He gambles, heavily. And he pursues a string of mistresses, combining passions in the heavily gambling Dolly Sisters. His life becomes connected with aristocracy and politicians and writers especially Arnold Bennett. He seduces Syrie, wife of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Henry Wellcome, before they both lose her to Somerset Maugham.

Then, as the Second World War starts, he is forced to give up his shop to pay his enormous debts. He becomes a shadow, an old man who takes a bus from his Putney flat to Oxford Street to shuffle past the windows he made famous.

A true tale of triumph to tragedy. Fabulous! December 2012; 261 pages

This is the book that inspired the ITV series Mr Selfridge which is returning for a second series early in 2014.