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Ian Norrie |
A bookseller’s fitting tribute, warts and all
IAN Norrie, Hampstead’s legendary bookseller at the High Hill Bookshop for more than 30 years, who has died at the age of 82, had the last laugh at his funeral at Golders Green Crematorium last week.
Almost 100 relatives, friends, writers and publishing associates turned up – and were asked to sing It Ain’t Necessarily So, the Gershwin song from Porgy and Bess, as a final tribute at the end of the secular service.
And Ian, who invited them not to wear black ties or dresses and to celebrate his life with laughter, also instructed his publisher friend Robin Hyman not to ignore “all my warts” in his tribute to him.
“So here goes,” said Robin. “Ian’s manner on occasion could be rude, abrasive, choleric, intolerant, curmudgeonly – add your own adjective. He alienated many local parents over the years because, ‘I objected to the behaviour of their free-ranging little monsters who sprayed crisps at the books and clutched ice lollies… Children and adults should frequent bookshops unaccompanied by soft fruits, ices, transistor radios and unleashed hounds. I traumatised many a Hampstead child but am unrepentant.’
“That was Ian’s justification for the now well-known notice he put up saying, ‘Children of Progressive parents admitted only on leads’ – witty but with a touch of menace.”
But, he added: “These stories show why some people found Ian hard to take. But underneath this sometimes forbidding exterior, you found the warmest of hearts and the kindest and most considerate of men…”
GERALD ISAAMAN |
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