The battle to save London's Travel Bookshop (made famous in the film Notting Hill) has opened on a new front, after a campaign by residents and writers failed to prevent its closure at the end of August. Now the Book Warehouse has acquired the lease to half of the building from the Travel Bookshop's founder Sarah Anderson, the Bookseller reported. 
Book Warehouse managing director James Malin said he anticipated a September 22 or 23 reopening, "probably" under the name the Notting Hill Bookshop. He also noted that the bookshop would maintain a focus on travel while stocking other subjects.
"This is such an iconic bookstore, and so well-loved even prior to the film, we did not want to see it close and yet another coffee shop open," he said. "We want to continue it pretty much as it was but to extend the range. It will still have the same look and style."
But Simon Gaul, who bought the Travel Bookshop from Anderson in 1991 and controls the lease on the other half of the building, is less than pleased by the development: "Book warehouses are just that; a place where remaindered books, cards, calendars, magazines etc are found. Worthy though such enterprises are, 'the Book Warehouse Notting Hill' has no association whatsoever--despite its occupying a part of the old location of the Travel Bookshop--with that 30-plus year old enterprise."
Poet and journalist Olivia Cole, who led the campaign to save the shop, agreed, telling the Kensington & Chelsea Chronicle that the Book Warehouse "are claiming they have rescued the Travel Bookshop and responded to the campaign. In fact they have not rescued it, they are destroying it. They are turning this special, quirky, spirited independent bookshop into a junk shop."
Book Warehouse's Malin observed: "Sadly bookselling has become an endangered profession, but we are doing our best to preserve the art. We hope the Notting Hill community and tourists from around the world will continue to support us."
