Where have all the bookshops gone?

Photo nabbed from the Birmingham Post.

Ever since I’ve lived in Birmingham, I’ve loved the fact that there’s two massive Waterstones, and I do so love a Waterstones. They were divided by about 200 metres of shopping street – one, inhabiting a grade II listed grand wedding cake of a building with a huge high ceiling and gilt-covered curlicues (which used to be a bank) and a tall, imposing, many-floored 1930s building.

I don’t go to the city centre as much as I used to (there was I time I went...