What calamity could possibly be worse than waking up to find that the small, rarefied town near your weekend cottage has lost its bookshop, leaving you nowhere to go browsing for the latest tome by George Monbiot or Naomi Klein before going home for tea and crumpets? Answer: when a new bookshop opens up, purporting to be an independent bookshop when it is actually a branch of Waterstones in disguise.
That is the terrible fate which has just been suffered by residents of Southwold, Suffolk, and Rye, East Sussex, whose High Streets are now adorned with shop fronts in a fetching shade of blue. Only in the small print does it say that their independent-sounding names are in fact trade names of Waterstones. Some locals, it turns out, are not the least bit impressed, describing the company’s marketing strategy as ‘subterfuge’.
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