Drifs Guide 1995-97

If you have ever wandered into a second-hand bookshop and wondered whether the proprietor was a misunderstood genius, a benevolent eccentric, or someone who actively resents the existence of customers, then Drifs Guide 1995-97 may be the field manual you never knew you needed.

Published in 1995, this gloriously idiosyncratic guide is nominally a directory of second-hand and antiquarian bookshops across Britain and Ireland. In reality, it is something far stranger: part travel guide, part social commentary, part prolonged argument with the entire book trade. Drif Field became legendary among book collectors for his brutally honest assessments of shops, stock, pricing, opening hours, and the peculiar habits of booksellers. His reviews were often less "consumer advice" and more "literary character assassination."

Long before online reviews allowed everyone to complain about poor service, Drif was already doing it professionally and with considerable enthusiasm. This guide roams across the British Isles cataloguing dusty treasures, hidden gems, and establishments that appear to have given up on commerce sometime during the Wilson government. The result is a book that is frequently funnier than many books intentionally written as humour.

There is a wonderful irony in the fact that a guidebook intended to help people find second-hand books has itself become a sought-after second-hand book. Many of the shops listed have vanished, some have moved, others have probably been converted into flats, coffee shops, or artisan candle boutiques. As a result, the guide now serves as an accidental time capsule of Britain’s book trade in the years just before the internet changed everything.

What makes Drif’s work memorable is the voice. Modern guidebooks strive for neutrality and balance. Drif preferred colourful opinions, cryptic abbreviations, sharp observations, and occasional flights of eccentricity. Reading it feels like being driven around the country by a particularly knowledgeable friend who has spent decades buying books and has developed strong views about virtually everyone involved in selling them.

For book collectors, bibliophiles, historians of the trade, or anyone fascinated by Britain’s disappearing landscape of second-hand bookshops, this is a genuinely entertaining artefact. For everyone else, it remains an unexpectedly funny snapshot of a world where finding an obscure volume required shoe leather, persistence, and occasionally the ability to decipher the temperament of the shop owner.

This copy is in good condition and comes from a period when guidebooks were printed on paper, navigation involved maps, and customer reviews required the inconvenience of actually publishing a book. As sold by Crappy Old Books, it offers a nostalgic journey through a lost kingdom of dusty shelves, improbable opening hours, and booksellers who may or may not have wanted your custom in the first place.

A guide to bookshops, certainly. A guide to human nature, arguably. A guide to diplomacy when asking for a discount from an antiquarian bookseller, absolutely not.

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