Heywood Hill

Heywood Hill is a bookshop at 10 Curzon Street, in the Mayfair district of London.

History
The shop was opened by George Heywood Hill on 3 August 1936, with the help of Lady Anne Gathorne-Hardy, who would later become his wife.

For the last three years of the Second World War, while George Heywood Hill was in the Army, Lady Anne ran the shop with the assistance of the novelist Nancy Mitford. In 1949 Elizabeth Forbes, the daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, joined the staff of the store where she worked prior to her career as a journalist, music critic, and musicologist. In the period following Heywood Hill's retirement, the shop was managed by Handasyde Buchanan, a notable contributor to books on natural history who had joined the shop in 1945. John Saumarez Smith, who had joined the staff straight from Cambridge in 1965, took up the reigns as manager in 1974 following Buchanan's retirement, a position he held for over thirty years. In 1991, the shop was bought by Nancy Mitford's brother-in-law, Andrew Cavendish, 11th Duke of Devonshire.

Since 2016 the shop has been owned by Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire. It has been managed by his son-in-law, Nicky Dunne since 2011. Heywood Hill specialises in rare books and collections of books, and has a service of assembling and delivering bespoke libraries for customers. It has been described as the late Queen's favourite bookshop.