John Prescott obituary

My husband John Prescott, who has died aged 88, was a second-hand book dealer who was never interested in a book's monetary value. He always insisted that books were for reading, and without white cotton gloves on. Until it closed in 1997, the Richmond Bookshop was a lively meeting point with many regular customers who could not bear the thought that they might miss a "recent acquisition".

Having run a sweet shop and a charity shop, he started the Richmond Bookshop in Richmond, Surrey, in 1965. The three aisles in the shop were filled from floor to ceiling with books, and customers were forever climbing up ladders to perch next to the top shelf or crouching on their knees to read the spines on the bottom shelf. The shop had a unique system of revolving the books in a section, so that each letter of the alphabet would have its time at eye-height. Two now well-known playwrights, Martin Crimp and Robert Holman, regularly raided the theatre section. There were queues in the street for the basement sales, for which John himself leafleted the centre of Richmond.