I AM saddened to hear that the bookshop in Wood Street is to close next year.

I remember being taken there by my parents at a very young age and finding the spiralling maze of hardbacks and the cellar with its beautifully worn steps complemented with the smell of old paper an awe-inspiring experience.

Whenever I visit the Victoria Bookshop I always recall this memory.

Compared with the Victoria, all the modern chain-store bookshops are hollow and soulless places because they all are clones of each other, with the same books with no individuality.

I hope that, as we have a year to go before our collective loss, the bookshop experiences a major upsurge in interest. I suspect many people reading the article did not know there was even a bookshop there.

Elliot Iles

Gorse Hill