Joy unconfined

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 10

Joy unconfined

Mostly Joy. By Thomas Joy. Michael Joseph. 206 pp. (Illustrated).

Subtitled "A Bookman’s Story,” this lively autobiography has attractions at mote levels than one. “It is a mistake not to be born in Oxford . . ", the author states as he describes a boyhood in a large, poor family, rich in adventures taking fish in nearby streams or scrambling for pennies after beating the parish bounds. Tommy began his working life as a junior in the Bodleian Library, where “Amongst literally millions of books, the older boys always knew the more pornographic ones . . ." Soon he began a five-year apprenticeship to a university bookseller, receiving a thorough training in both the new and secondhand trade, which stood him in good stead in a successful bookselling career—managing director of Harrods* book department, before moving to similar work in the Army and Navy Stores. Of this revivified business he was to be eventually deputy managing director with much heavier responsibilities than selling

books, for, as he says, given the opportunity, “almost all human beings can accomplish very much more than they deem themselves capable of.” Bookselling remained Joy’s favourite form of business, and he has returned to it after retirement from the Army and Navy as managing director of Hatchards. Founded in 1797, this historic Piccadilly shop has numbered among its customers Byron, Wilberforce, Gladstone, Cecil Rhodes and five generations of the Royal Family. Thomas Joy offers us insights into retailing, control of staff, and modem life generally. He does so with much urbanity, throwing in a delightful medley of wit and anecdote which one has to curb oneself from quoting interminably.