As regular readers of this publication will know, this is my first column in this space. At the end of last year Mark Rubbo decided to retire his regular column. Although, it won’t be the last you see of ‘Mark’s Say’, as I am told that he might submit a few words here and there, when the inspiration strikes.

In other news, we’re excited to announce The Readings Foundation 2024 recipients this month. The very worthy grassroots organisations will receive an allocation from a total donation from the Foundation of $131,439. Our foundation manager, Angela Crocombe, has provided a full summary of this year’s recipients which can be found here.

One of the pleasures of working in the bookshop is getting to know the many customers who walk through our doors. A bookshop, as you can imagine, has a wide range of customers with varied interests. There are some who like to browse the shelves quietly and keep to themselves, and there are others who very much make themselves known to you. They often become friends and add richness to the work and our lives, which is what makes bookselling so interesting. Books are always a great starting point for a rewarding discussion.

Terry Whelan, who passed away last month, was a customer who very much made himself known to everyone who worked at Readings Carlton. He started shopping at Readings in 1972, just three years after it opened, and was a loyal and frequent customer up until his final days. Fifty-one years! His reading interests covered art, religion, history and politics with a smattering of fiction, although this was mostly limited to the classics. He had read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time series many, many times over and made it a point to read one volume each year.

If you happened to be passing Terry’s house, it was likely that you would see him through the window, sitting at his desk, reading.

When I say frequent customer, I mean very frequent. Sometimes he would visit us three to four days in a week. This was especially so when we were supplying him with his many subscriptions – the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and on and on. There were phone calls and special orders and many hours researching monographs for various shows in London. More phone calls. Back and forth. If I had a dollar for every time I heard the page over the intercom, ‘Terry’s on line one!’

We are always happy and willing to provide the full subscription and special-order service for our customers, although with the internet these services aren’t always required like they used to be. For Terry, we were tireless in our efforts to track down the books he needed.

I doubt he ever owned a computer, and he never got a mobile phone. If he were to go out for the day, he would record a very specific answering-machine message letting people know where they might find him and when he would be home. ‘Heading into Readings,’ would be a regular refrain on Terry’s answering machine.

Terry was a member of the NGV and occasionally he would invite me along to tour the latest exhibition. He was a great art lover and was an excellent tour guide; his understanding of the art works and their place in history was deep and his commentary illuminating. He was always careful to include a handful of ribald jokes to liven things up a little. One afternoon, after a tour of the Ai Weiwei exhibition, Terry and I were having a coffee in the members lounge of the gallery when a woman approached us and asked if Terry was my father. Terry dined out on that story for quite a few months.

Terry was a one of a kind. We will miss him at Readings.