Bookshop

My books for sale can be seen on the Advanced Book Exchange, online at AbeBooks, under William English Rare Books:

When did it start? I was given a copy of The Red Balloon, the book of the film by Lamorisse, or maybe my mother reading Ventje Vijf Haar to me (she was Dutch). Then browsing in second hand bookshops in Leicester; Humberstone Road, a welcome distraction whilst waiting for the 616 bus to Tugby. Clarke and Satchell near the market place where they acquired a copy of The Secret Life of Salvador Dali by advertising in The Bookseller.

Later, I started to collect books, journals and ephemera relating to experimental film, frequenting Fred Zettner’s Cinema Bookshop on Great Russell Street. At some point the collecting merged into trading. In the 1990s I sold rare books in Roe and Moore on Museum Street, specialising in artists’ books, concrete poetry and Russian avant-garde publications, issuing several catalogues before the internet gradually changed the nature of bookselling…

Photo: Stoneygate Court, Leicester 1950