It all happened on Booksellers' Row

Fire, murder and regicide plotting—Cecil Court has a colourful history and remains one of London's most atmospheric streets, says Huon Mallalieu, who has spent a lifetime browsing there

- Huon Mallalieu

IT is more than 60 years since I first found my way to Cecil Court, a pedestrian street between St Martin's Lane and Charing Cross Road in London WC2. I was already addicted to antique and junk shops, as well as to second-hand and antiquarian bookshops, so it became a regular haunt during school holidays. The court is about two centuries older than the adjacent Burleigh Mansions, which were built in 1894 when Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury and Prime Minister, was under attack as a slum landlord, although his properties were not as insalubrious as others nearby. Still owned by the Cecil family today, it was first laid out in the later 17th century and had a mixed reputation during the 18th.

The first recorded bookseller was a Huguenot, Noé Bouquet at the sign of the Bible, who published a catechism in 1704. Next was a snuff shop, the Highlander and Dove, which also traded in Christian and slightly bawdy publications, plus Jacobite propaganda. Its Cupid and Hymen: A Voyage to the Isles of Love and Matrimony might have found readers in a neighbouring establishment known as The Ham, which was a pub ‘with rooms’, where customers might lose their watches and purses.