Oliver
Every book in this shop was rescued from a skip by someone who cared.
Where it started
Oliver grew up in a village in Yorkshire where the library van came on Tuesdays. He read everything on it twice and then started on the driver's own books.
What they wanted
He wanted to write the great English novel. He moved to London at twenty-two and wrote in cafés while working in a bank call centre.
The wall
Seven years, two finished novels, forty-one rejections.
The moment it clicked
He was walking past a shop clearance in Notting Hill as men threw boxes of old books into a skip. He climbed in and spent the afternoon pulling them out. A woman stopped and bought three from him on the pavement. He loved books more than he loved being the one who wrote them.
The new path
He took over the empty shop's lease month to month and filled it with the rescued books.
The hard part
The rent doubled in his second year, and he moved into the room above the shop to keep it open.
The breakthrough
The street's residents bought shares to keep the shop alive. It is now owned by three hundred neighbours.
Today
Oliver runs the shop on Portobello Road and hosts readings on Thursday nights. He is writing again, slowly, at the counter. The Notting Hill frame is always pushed up on his head until a customer asks for a recommendation.
This is Oliver's locked face. Every photo and video of his starts from it, so his look stays the same everywhere his appears.
Amara
Priya
Kai