Heywood Hill

George Heywood Hill opened his Curzon Street bookshop on 3 August 1936 with backing from his father and help from Anne Gathorne-Hardy, whom he later married. When Heywood Hill was called up during the war, the novelist Nancy Mitford ran the counter, and her family's later connection to the shop endures: since 2016 it has been owned by Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire, a relation by marriage to the Mitfords. Nicky Dunne has managed the shop since 2011, continuing a service that assembles bespoke libraries for clients by post. The two-floor Georgian premises still deal in new, secondhand and antiquarian stock, with staff who track down out-of-print titles on request.