James Daunt: the man who saved Waterstones - ES Magazine - Life & Style - London Evening Standard

Following his heart at the age of 26, he took a loan from the now-defunct Business Expansion Scheme to buy, for £240,000, arguably the most beautiful bookshop in London: the Edwardian former antiquarian booksellers at 83 Marylebone High Street. As he and his wife Katy brought up two daughters, Molly and Eliza, in Hampstead, Daunt Books grew, slowly, into six artfully curated bookshops in the capital's loveliest enclaves (Marylebone, Holland Park, Hampstead, Chelsea, Belsize Park and Cheapside) - very different to the 300 Waterstones up and down the country. Daunt's taste isn't particularly populist - during our interview he has a crack at Fifty Shades of Grey (‘sometimes, for reasons no one can ever understand, a book sells in bucketloads...') and he prefers authors getting up and talking - ‘or reciting poetry to 30 people' - to big celebrity signings. He admits to being dazzled by Hillary Clinton. ‘There was a buzz. Even the 200th person whose book she signed came away delighted.'