When I was a teenager and discovered poetry, I dreamed that, one day, I would run the first poetry-only bargain bookshop. I was going to call it ‘Ezra Poundland’. Sadly, despite my love of a good pun, with the advent of online booksellers this dream never became reality.

I’ve always had a fondness for independent bookshops. My favourite is E.J. Morten in Didsbury, Manchester. Not quite on the high street, you have to take a short diversion down a small cobbled side road. For me, this adds to the ambience and the sense of escape I always feel on entering a bookshop. 

Run by the incredibly hardworking John Morten, this establishment has been supplying literature on the same premises since 1959. You might nip in some time and say hello to John, and perhaps buy a book and not particularly know anything about John and his business. 

In this fast-moving world where most things are now available at the click of a button, shopkeepers are often invisible. I was fortunate to spend some time with John as he’s been running bookstalls at many of my live shows over the past few years. And not just my shows – he’s helped everyone from Richard E. Grant to Sandi Toksvig via Sammy McIlroy. 

A family business

I recently popped in to his Didsbury shop for a chat about his day job. What I found was surprising, impressive and somewhat intriguing. Not one to blow his own trumpet, John’s enthusiasm for his work is infectious. He’s a quiet but industrious man who has carved out an enviable lifestyle immersed in a wide range of literature. John works hard every day to make his dream come true. 

E.J. Morten doesn’t only sell books – it publishes them. It was responsible for an early Seamus Heaney booklet called A Lough Neagh Sequence, published in January 1969 under the Phoenix Pamphlet Poets Press. It’s a scarce, early publication, with only 1,000 copies printed in total, making it a sought-after item for collectors. Signed copies cost thousands and even an unsigned copy would cost hundreds. 

At its peak, Morten published 168 titles in 12 years and even bought a share in a printing works. 

Not your run-of-the-mill bookshop by any means, John’s books have appeared in many great TV series and films through his media arm. At one time, many of the books seen on sets belonged to Morten, including The Full Monty, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Room with a View, Brideshead Revisited, Emmerdale, Doctor Finlay, and many other films and shows. They even provided the books for the filming of The Parole Officer which I wrote with Steve Coogan.

The media work started back in the day when John’s dad bought 450 volumes of the Quarterly Review in original wrappers for £17. A television studio rang to ask if he could fill a solicitor’s office with paper. The Quarterly Review was uncut so they just put the volumes on the shelves back to front and they looked fantastic – at £16 a week they made a tidy profit. This is the sort of entrepreneur you need to be to survive as a bookshop owner. 

John is the third generation Morten to deal in books. As well as new books, he has a passion for his second-hand and antiquarian book arm. When I visited his shop he showed me a signed copy of What is a Classic by T.S. Eliot which is, of course, a classic. John loves some books so much that he finds it hard to sell them, like a signed Agatha Christie and a photo album of Daphne du Maurier. 

He exhibits regularly at second-hand book fairs in the UK and Europe, selling specialist antiquarian and rare books sourced from around the world, and has bought and sold books as far afield as Australia, Stockholm, Toronto, and the USA. John’s specialist subjects include history, 19th and 20th century military history, sport, travel, and English literature. His RAF hat sits proudly next to his desk as he was an air force reserve for 18 years, and he sources antiquarian and rare books signed by eminent historical figures.

Morten still publishes today including a local history of Didsbury and The City Alphabet – A Complete Who’s Who of Manchester City, many copies of which are at the shop and are signed by Man City players. Another of the books that Morten continues to publish is The Manchester Man by Isabella Banks under the name Mrs G. Linnæus Banks. It was first published in 1876 and is remarkable for its historical detail. It contains vivid accounts of early 19th century textiles and fashions, historical characters, and historical events including Peterloo. 

A quotation from the novel forms the epitaph on the tombstone of the great Tony Wilson, Broadcaster, cultural icon, one of the founders of Factory Records in Manchester, and a regular customer at Morten, it reads: ‘Mutability is the epitaph of worlds / Change alone is changeless / People drop out of the history of a life as of a land / Though their work or their influence remains.’ 

A fitting tribute to Tony Wilson and so many others who put themselves wholeheartedly into their work. John Morten is such a man. 

By Henry Normal

Main image of John Morten by Henry Normal

 

E.J. Morten