Vintage Penguins in Eastbourne (courtesy of Camilla's Bookshop)

I didn't get to see a lot of Eastbourne.

There was no time during my recent two-week stay in Europe in which the weather was particularly conducive to sight-seeing, but the day in Eastbourne was particularly unpleasant. I arrived in the rain on a day when the wind was so fierce no one seemed able to get the door of the hotel shut, and I saw the pier only because it was across the road from the hotel. Now I look back rather fondly to last year when I walked along the cobb at Lyme Regis early one morning and naively reflected on how much more tranquil the pebbled beaches of England were compared to the beaches of Perth. It is the problem with extrapolating from small samples.

But Eastbourne is the home of Camilla's Bookshop, and that made my brief visit worthwhile.

The first thing I saw of Camilla's was an outside bookshelf which clearly operates on an honour system: there was a large bookshelf running alongside the side of the shop which was filled with paperbacks, and people are trusted to take a book and leave whatever is required, just as you see in Hay-on-Wye. There were no Penguins here, but as the bookshop was open there were other books in front of the shop available for sale, including a box of inexpensively-priced green-spined Penguins, and so finding several that I wanted to purchase, I was enticed inside.

The photos below show how Camilla's presents: it seems completely disorganised, and there are books stacked anyhow on the shelves, and surplus books stacked anyhow on the floor. There is a bookshelf of green Penguins not far from the front door, but then downstairs there is a whole bookcase filled with orange-spined books, a mixture of vintage Penguins and those published more recently. The books which don't fit on the shelves are stacked on the floor, so it meant a pleasant afternoon searching through them for the ones I wanted, with all the books I saw priced below two pounds each.

I think I found about 40 more Penguins (and therefore faced a heavily-book-laden search for my hotel). Many from of these dated from the late-60s which, with their less-interesting covers, are often surprisingly difficult to find.

Links:
Half a Million Books (A Fiction Habit)