While we stock a wide range of foreign language dictionaries, phrasebooks and courses as new books we are not able to stock more than a few new novels, children's or other volumes in French and German.
Our Second Hand stock, however, includes over a thousand volumes published abroad. The largest section is of German books, with French not far behind. This does not reflect the relative frequency of teaching in these languages; maybe it results from the greater durability of German publications, maybe the proprietor's interest in and desperate attempts to improve his understanding of the latter language and culture. Spanish still comes far behind in representation, depite its popularity here for at least a generation. Russian books form quite a large section, a classic demonstration of the time-lag betwween the initial purchase of books and their release onto the second-hand market. It is a pity that we get so few books in Italian or Portuguese, considering the historic and current importance of these tongues - but then we are so poor at teaching languages at school level in particular, understandable given the wide choice even within Europe.Dutch and the Scandinavian languages appear in occasional collections, which can make up for their paucity in numbers by their interest, as they are almost certain to come from native speakers, whereas our French, German, Russian and Spanish collections are dominated by the classic literature, ancient and modern, studied in sixth forms and universities. We also get in very occasional bursts in such languages as Hungarian, Polish, Japanese, Icelandic, Hebrew, Chinese and Arabic. The rarity of the latter as well as of Hindi shows how little the literary cultural lives of eastern immigrants are integrated with that of European literature. This is perhaps fortunate for us, and for most booksellers, as we are quite unable to read the scripts in which the relevant books are written. At present, I make periodic attempts to transliterate an ancient Kama Sutra inTamil that I have squirreled away.
All these books have been driven out of the shop's more accessible reaches by more quick-selling subjects; but for Dave's proprietorial obstinancy, foreign languages would have been dispensed with altogether (I think). However I do aspire to be Elrond, Tolkien's lord of the Last Homely House in the wilderness of......Monogamy? Monophony? Monotony? (certainly). How about Monoglottony. The Utlander, as well as the student, can find something at least in their native or adopted tongue - even if it is likely to be the overseas equivalent of Austen, Dickens or Lawrence, or (in Slovak) perhaps an illustrated encyclopaedia of tropical fish culture or the tourist guide to a Museum of Folk Costume.
Where are they to be found? It's no use looking, you must ask for THE OUTBACK, illustrated above. It's a delightfully intimate and secret retreat when found, if somewhat chilly in Winter, and, as you can see, offers DIY musical entertainment. To reach it, go through (excuse me, excuse me) the cafe extension to the Ivanry, out of the door, up the slippery steps, turn immediately right, duck under the trailing vines, right again, down a step and in through the door. One of the light switches to the right of the door needs to be turned "off" to turn the lights "on". Best to check in the café on the way out that the isolating master switch is on. Maybe they will know where that is!
So far as our purchasing of books in foreign languages is concerned, it is often truer to say that we take rather than buy them, but we will pay a bit in cash or credit for your collection of students days and perhaps more for the collections of native speakers, as such books are much scarcer in the UK and may well include one or two rarities for which we can pay more, as the net allows us describe easily and to sell with more difficulty books in all languages expressible in the Roman alphabet. This is one area where it is probably necessary to insist that I, Dave, am myself prised out of the backroom.
Recently one of our Central European customers dropped in with the help of what he claimed was a Spitfire, but which we suspect was a MIG liberated from the noted private collection of Brian Cody. The shock of the landing seems to have displaced a course of the stonework.