In 1949, the New York based writer Helene Hanff replied to an advert in The Saturday Review of Literature by the London bookshop Marks & Co. Her letter had the list of books that she was looking to buy. Frank Doel, an employee of the bookshop, replied to her and from those first letters grew a nearly twenty-year friendship, though the two of them never met.

84 Charing Cross Road, the first book in this double book volume, is Hanff’s letters to and from Marks & Co. She mainly corresponded with Frank Doel, but other members of staff also sent her letters. Hanff’s and Doel’s letters share their love of literature, drawing the reader into that world, but these letters also paint a picture of post-war London life that turns into the 1950s and ’60s.

There is a thread of sadness running through this book, Hanff never got to visit London and meet the people with whom she had formed such a lasting friendship. Fate and life’s expenses intervened every time she tried to plan her visit.

The charm of this book is the letters themselves, they reveal so much about the people writing them, especially Hanff and Doel.

In The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, the second book here, it is 1971 and Hanff finally gets to make her first trip to London, following the success of 84 Charing Cross Road. This book details her trip, in which she gets to find the London of English literature. Her writing is clear and unsentimental, but she still takes the reader on her emotional journey with her. Unfortunately Frank Doel died three years before her trip and Marks & Co had since closed down. There is a poignant moment when Hanff visits the empty and closed bookshop and finds the gold letters that once spelled out the shop’s name in its window lying abandoned on the dusty floor.

Hanff’s writing was always crisp, informative, very readable and shot through with her sharp wit. This double volume of her books, two of her shorter books, which so match each other, are the perfect gateway into the world of her wonderful writing. Regrettably, this world is not a large world, she only wrote a handful of books, but they are all perfectly formed and expertly written.

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