Marc Harrison

The term “banned books” means many different things, depending on where you live. In the U.S., Banned Books Week is an annual event, which celebrates “the freedom to read.” What a beautiful thought. Reading the books you choose should be a right, but it also confers a wonderful freedom, allowing you to travel in your mind to anywhere. This freedom can

One of the nicest fairs in the cycle of our year, is the Chelsea book fair. This is managed by Graham York, on behalf of the ABA, and is held in Chelsea Old Town Hall. This is a beautiful venue, with tapestries and paintings from English history adorning the walls, and oozing with that easy charm that

After a busy fair in Amsterdam, there was just time to repack my stock and change my socks before heading off to Paris for the autumn edition of Bibliomania. This is a large event held in the Espace Champerret. Conveniently

Last week saw the return of one of my favorite book fairs -- the annual Amsterdam book fair. This is hosted at the Marriott hotel, by the NVvA, which is the Netherlands branch of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. What better way to start the day than this view of the Reichsmuseum from my hotel room?

I would like to say that after organizing the London PBFA book fair, Marcia and I had a well earned rest. In fact we moved house, which has kept us busy for the last month. But now our gaze returns to the books, and one of the largest fairs of the year is the Dordrecht book market (or Dordtse Boekenmarkt as it is properly known).

Sometimes a book is as much about its provenance as the item itself. For example, this eighteenth-century encyclopedia of China, finely illustrated by the Osaka artist Tachibana Morikuni owes much of its interest to the fact that it came from the collection of James E. Fagan.

It is that time of year again, when Marcia and I must put all thoughts of road trips to one side, whilst we concentrate on preparing for the PBFA London Antiquarian Book Fair. As the name suggests, this is in London, has lots of antiquarian books, and is put on by the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association (

After the joy of the Colmar fair, it was time that we prepared our new stock and set off for the Maastricht Antiquarian Book & Print (MABP) fair. Maastricht is in the very south of the Netherlands, in South Limburg, a thin

Pausing only to put our snowshoes and extra warm jumpers away, Marcia and I went to the airport to go to the SELAC fair (Salon européen du livre ancien et de la gravure de Colmar). 

Colmar is a very nice little town in Alsace, just inside France. The border is so close that in the airport you choose whether to

Having shaken the dust of Stuttgart from our proverbial shoes, this week Marcia and I packed up our Volvo with stock, and set off for Dunkirk, the ferry to Dover, and eventually the PBFA Cambridge book fair.