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Press, 27 June 1987, Page 23

Back to Charing Cross

84 Charing Cross Road. By Helens Hanff. Future, 1987 220 pp. $9.99. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) “This bundle of correspondence was a book?” asked a bewildered New York critic on the publication of “84 Charing Cross Road.” The author, whom innumerable readers now regard as a personal friend, echoes his amazement, “and it was a play, and a film? I don’t figure it.” The book was first published in Britain in 1971, and in this form which includes “The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street” it has been reprinted repeatedly. It appears again this year with the release of the film starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. From 1949 to 1969 Helene Banff, “a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books” living in New York, kept up an intermittent correspondence with Frank Doel, of Marks and Co. Antiquarian Book-sellers, in London. In 1970, in a fit of nostalgia for gentler days, she collected, edited and published the correspondence. One of the chief delights of the resulting book lies in the contrasting styles of the pugnacious American and the proper Englishman. Helene Banffs letters, the food parcels she generously sent to be shared by those at Marks, and Co, and her exuberant delight in the books she received (“P

and P arrived looking exactly as Jane ought to look, soft leather, slim and impeccable”) gradually thawed Frank Doel’s restraint and Helene developed a warm friendship with him, his family, and the others, at the firm. ? She never managed to visit England while Frank was alive, but when the book was published in London in June, 1971, Andre Deutsch flew her over to help publicise it. The second half of this edition “The Duchess df Bloomsbury Street” is a vivid, delightful account of her five weeks there; the places she loved, the people she met, the joy of being in London after many disappointments, and her incredulity at the way she was welcomed and feted by people who had loved her book. This review is probably unnecessary (though I am pleased to have a new copy as my old one is becoming tattered from constant reading. and rereading by my family and friends). Most people who love beautiful books, or London, or literary talk, or sparkling, warm writing will have read “84 Charing Cross Road” already. , But, if you qualify on any of these counts, and have not yet made Miss Banff's acquaintance, do so at once, either by seeing the Channing play, or film, or, preferably, by reading this marvellous book.