St Philip’s Books, 82 St Aldates, Oxford, OX1 1RA
On Wednesday morning, I woke up at the ungodly hour of half seven to help my friend Christine (shout-out to Christine!) move to Oxford, the city of spires and surreal views. Christine is a smart cookie and I don’t just say that because she’s starting an MA at Oxford. She’s a smart cookie because she’s picked as her new home a city full of cobbled roads, eccentric academics and many, many bookshops. Ranging from the ubiquitous Waterstones to the Oxford University Press Bookshop to the very classy £2 Bookshop, Oxford is the perfect city for those of us who wish we could curl up under a blanket in a draughty old stone building filled with books so beautiful and old you’re afraid to touch them and never leave.
Walking around the city, I realised that I could have written about any number of bookshops and I sadly had to bypass some that looked amazing, telling myself that now I’ve got more reasons to go back and wander through the streets getting lost. I chose to write about St. Philip’s Books, though, because my friend Gabi (shout-out to Gabs!) has been working there for a few years now and is always telling me about this completely original and completely strange place. His insights into the way the shop operates (or doesn’t) add even more humour and personality to a wander through it.
St. Philip’s is one of those places you’d easily walk by if you didn’t know it was there. There are signs that say there’s a bookshop and promise Theology, History, Literature and Philosophy books, but walking past, all you see is a Chinese restaurant. Fortunately, I had my own personal guide who led me through the wide stone arch, behind the Chinese restaurant and into this quiet little shop removed completely from any noise from the street. Apparently the staff often have to deal with disgruntled and hungry tourists who aren’t interested in the books and were actually looking for the restaurant. These people probably make up a large percentage of the people who wander into the shop, since I’m assured that even on the best days they expect only about ten customers.
The books in this shop are not exactly for those of us on a budget and, even I admit it, the prices are about twenty times what you’d expect to pay on Amazon. 
The trouble is, I don’t think you’ll find them on Amazon. These rare and speciality books include old bibles, first editions of novels and poetry, obscure and often hilarious religious and theological books, leather-bound history books, speciality books about Oxford and a very awesome hard cover edition of The Hobbit. The copy of The Hobbit that my dad read to me from when I was a child was the gold, hardcover 50th anniversary edition that came in its own box and had gold-leaf pages. It was the first book (and by that I mean physical book, not story) I ever loved. I remember feeling awed and afraid to touch it because it was so special that it seemed wrong for grubby little child fingers to hold it. This is how every single book in this shop made me feel. So, knowing that I would never be able to own any of them, just being there was some kind of solace. Gabi laughed at me, cruelly, as I scuttled through the shop having huge amounts of fun with the old books.
Some of the highlights of my visit were a first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party, a beautiful hard cover copy of The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskell which had an inscription dated from 1931 and an absolutely tiny, metal-
bound Book of Common Prayer with tiny print, thin yellow pages, beautiful calligraphy and a tiny metal lock. It was very Jane Eyre. I am assured that despite the fact that the shop is already busting with books and cluttered with boxes which are, presumably, filled with more boxes, this is just the beginning. The owner (who for some reason I think of as St. Philip, though I hear he’s just called Chris) apparently has an entire garage filled with books he has yet to catalogue. I think there’s something romantic about the idea of a man whose entire life is dedicated to collecting beautiful old books, so much so that he can’t even keep track of them.
Oxford is an undeniably literary city. For some, it evokes Alice Liddell and her Wonderland, others imagine being at Hogwarts and still others imagine sitting in on a lecture with C.S. Lewis or Tolkien. But what was a pleasant surprise for me 
was to find that this rich literary culture isn’t confined to the university; it spreads out from there and takes over the shops, the streets and even the buildings, which all seem to have stories of their own to tell. And it is this pervading book culture that I am using to justify my visit to this unusual bookshop. While one of the intentions of this project was initially to show that buying books cheaply is still possible outside of the internet, it has become about much more than that. I have come to treasure bookshops where, regardless of the price range, books are appreciated and St. Philip’s is clearly such a place. It may be true that the average book-lover who wanders in can’t afford to take home any of these treasures, but I believe that it’s important nonetheless just to know that they’re there. I am grateful not only to the man who collects and keeps and sells these books, but to the generations that came before him who thought that they would make good presents, who cared enough to keep them in good shape and who simply bothered enough to keep them in their basements, even if they were just collecting dust. So while I dream of one day being able to buy one of these beautiful books, whose pages I’ll turn gently and protect them from grubby little children fingers whenever possible, for now, it’s enough for me just to know that they’re still out there.
The Matilda Project 