Customer Reviews

Shop Horror: The Best of the Worst in British Shop Names

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The fun and froth of the British High Street is brilliantly captured in this lovely photobook of quirkily named shops. 'Wooden it be nice' furniture, 'Blazing saddles' cycles, 'Change of a dress' clothes, 'Pane in the glass' windows and 'Lettuce eat', sandwiches will give you an idea of how groaningly wonderful these shops are.

The book is basically one photo to a page, a straight-on shot of the shop centred on the page with a geographic caption. A simple clean layout that lets the photos speak for themselves but unfortunately every few pages there are spreads (twenty-four in all) devoted to a particular shop with a really messy layout of several photos and captions. So it's four stars and no cigar.

This is surely a genre that will produce a volume two and to help future retailers get in that book how about: 'Go away' travel, 'Happy to meat you' butchers, 'Give them a brake' cycles, 'We knead your body' sauna and a sort of predictable 'The end of window pains' glaziers.

Another book I've enjoyed along the same lines as 'Shop Horror' is 'Welcome to Britain' (ISBN 0755314476) a photo celebration of the worst in British lifestyles and the landscape. A tongue-in-cheek treasure.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

"Shop Horror". It's a British book full of photos of badly named shops, with discussions with businessfolk who named them. Britain is beautiful, I think, even the shops.