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Hello and a very happy new year from The Londoner! We hope it's off to a good start already. Usual service will resume on Monday (with our usual jam-packed briefing), but until then please see out of the last of the festive season in style with this piece from Peter Carlyon. In it, he meets the people behind some of London's oldest (and most idiosyncratic) shops to find out how they stay in business in a city as expensive and modernity-obsessed as the capital.
Shops in old London have always specialised in the specific. In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Mr John Dashwood arrives in Oxford Street to “bespeak Fanny a seal” — to commission a wax stamp — while nearby shoppers browse feverishly for toothpick cases.
But though you can still find just about any item across the capital today, many of the more niche parlours have retreated online. Yet some of the city's oldest and most esoteric shops are still going strong, swimming Michael Phelps-like against the tides of business closures and modernity. I spoke to their owners and managers to find out how they’ve managed to endure in 21st century London.
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