Clodagh Finn: We must help bookshops weather Covid storm

It might be too late to start a campaign to have bookshops classified as essential retailers, but it’s still not too late to give them our essential business

Legendary bookshop Shakespeare and Company in Paris hit hard times during the pandemic. Picture: AP Photo/Michel Euler

How I miss bookshops and everything about them. The browsing, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the heady smell of paper. There’s certainly a case to be made to have them classified as essential businesses, even in these Covid-challenged times. To borrow a phrase from Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp, they are the most important of the least important things.

They are always the first places I seek out whenever I visit a new town or city. They help me find my bearings, a sort of zero-mile marker from which to measure all forays to the shops. Perhaps that’s why news of hard times at Shakespeare and Company, the world-famous bookshop which is a stone’s throw from the real ‘kilometre zero’ in central Paris, struck a particular chord.