ANNIE GRAY is well known as the resident food historian on the Radio 4 programme The Kitchen Cabinet. She has written wonderful books on food, ranging from how to produce meals as if you were the host at Downton Abbey to how we have been celebrating Christmas over the centuries. Her abilities are based on profound erudition and research, coupled with beautiful English and, above all, her skill in telling delightful and amusing stories.

Her new book The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, although moving away from food itself, does tell us how and where we can get the food and all the other stuff that we think we need. It is a panorama of shopping over the centuries. The critical clue is in the subtitle: A history of the high street.

Gray confessed in the introduction “I admit that I am not a fan of shopping for pleasure.” But she loves her high street, and finds it endlessly fascinating. Of course, the shops are critical to the high street, but, for her, it is that a high street is the focal point of a town and the communities that come to it for services, leisure, and sociability.

This entertaining book covers principally the periods between 1650 and 1965, with a final chapter about where we are now. A significant theme is constant change and adaptability of the high street in products, presentation, architecture, style of selling, the part played by women, management structure, treatment of employees, and who the shoppers are. Through her focus on the high street, Gray has achieved an illuminating and accurate picture of the profound social changes in Britain in these periods. In chronological order, each chapter covers a portion of these years.

alamyAn ideal shop interior from an Edwardian trade manual, reproduced in the book: meticulous display, and chairs for the customers while they discuss their orders

She gets a reader to feel that they are a participant in each historic period by starting out each chapter with an appropriate shopping list, and who the reader might be. Gray gives a historical analysis of what the high street would be like. Then she invites the reader to go on an excursion for shopping and sociability on a particular high street in that historical period in a named, actual town. Her detailed knowledge of what that high street was like then is incredible, so much fun, and of great interest to the reader.

Many of us are discouraged by the closure of so many shops, restaurants, banks, and other features of our high streets. Because Gray has seen over the centuries so many challenges and changes, this book is filled with hope.

The Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen is Archdeacon Emeritus of Hackney, in east London.

The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker: A history of the high street
Annie Gray
Profile £22
(978-1-80081-224-6)
Church Times Bookshop £19.80