Henry Hitchings on the world in Bookshops

Henry Hitchings is an author, reviewer and critic, specializing in narrative non-fiction, with a particular emphasis on language and cultural history. His second book, The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English , won the 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize . He is the president of the Johnson Society of Lichfield. As of 2018, he is chair of the drama section of the UK's Critics' Circle . He was a King's Scholar at Eton College before going to Christ Church, Oxford, and then to University College London to research his PhD on Samuel Johnson. In 2016 Hitchings edited a collection of original essays about bookshops, entitled Browse: The World in Bookshops . Its contributors included Alaa Al Aswany , Stefano Benni , Michael Dirda , Daniel Kehlmann , Andrey Kurkov , Yiyun Li , Pankaj Mishra , Dorthe Nors , Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor , Ian Sansom , Elif Shafak , Iain Sinclair , Ali Smith , Sasa Stanisic and Juan Gabriel Vasquez . We met in London to talk about Browse , and our experiences in bookstores around the world.