The Wiki Man | 27 February 2010

It takes a more ruthless person than me to walk past any of the defunct branches of Borders without feeling some pangs of conscience. I am sure the chain made some mistakes (it had a strange habit of opening vast, hangar-like stores in out-of-town retail parks such as Lakeside, places not generally known for their wide-ranging literary tastes), but its shops were usually well stocked and staffed. No, it is people like me who are responsible for this bankruptcy, our every Amazon visit a further nail in the coffin of the traditional bookseller. How long before the proper bookshop becomes as rare on our streets as the traditional tobacconist?

I would feel a little less guilty about the part I played in Borders’s demise if I thought their high-street properties would be used for something useful. But they will probably re-emerge as yet more shops selling women’s clothes or shoes, making our town centres even more monotonous than they are now.