JAMES BOND has not had such a battle with communism since From Russia With Love, but on the walls of Richard Platt’s bookshop in Blackheath, southeast London, 007 is about to lose out to Mao Zedong, or rather half a dozen prints of Mao from Shanghai (£149 each).

The front room of the Bookshop on the Heath is dominated as much by pictures as words. Ancient maps and rare photos of the Beatles fight for space with engagingly odd books that tempt you to open them — such as a history of Bovril advertising or a 19th-century gilt Bible in Welsh. But it is Bond that sells best, Platt sells a Bond film poster every fortnight.

He believes in drawing people in with his unusual displays, a lesson he learnt from bookshops in Australia. “They presented everything so beautifully,” he says. He is fortunate that the shop is on a corner of Blackheath’s one-way system, so that cars slow as they go past, and that the shop has large windows.

“I change the displays every month or so,” he says. “It is important to give the shop a fresh look.” So his selection of ancient Wisdens are about to make way for a display on sailing, with a signed poster of Ellen MacArthur and books on Nelson.

Platt started trading in books in his twenties, helped by copies of The Book Collector, founded in 1952 by, ironically, Ian Fleming. “I bought a rare Mervyn Peake in a charity shop for 20p and sold it the next day for £20,” he says. His collection now includes such gems as a complete signed set of Colin Dexters (£6,500) or a first edition of The Prisoner of Azkaban from Australia with J. K. Rowling wrongly credited as Joanne (£1,500).

Local faces such as Jools Holland and Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen pop in, but one celebrity did not make a purchase. “Roy Hattersley said they were too expensive,” Platt says, although there is a wideish selection of £1 paperbacks for even the most skinflint of politicians.

PATRICK KIDD

Contact 020-8852 4786; www.bookshopontheheath.co.uk

Specialises in First editions, maps and movie posters

Prize exhibit The Tiger in the Well by Philip Pullman with the final paragraph missing. Only ten exist (£4,500).

Hard to shift “A complete set of Walter Scotts, which I’d had for two years, were bought by a Greek lady who thought their green binding went with her furniture.”

Best customer story “A lady once paid for some books and said she wanted them delivered. I only realised later that she hadn ’t left her address. I spent the morning looking in every shop in Blackheath to track her down and found her in the library.”

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