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The Tennis Bookshop (TTB) in Something Directory

 

The Tennis Bookshop was established in September 1988 by Alan Chalmers as a specialist catalogue dealer in printed matter related to Lawn Tennis, Real/Court Tennis, Rackets/Racquets, and Squash Rackets, there being at the time no other specialist dealers in these fields, though most other sports were well covered. Since then, several others have set up similar businesses, but I make a strong claim to be the world’s leading dealer. I played squash rackets and lawn tennis for 30 years, and have played real tennis for the last fifteen years. In addition, I have organised many lawn tennis and squash tournaments from club up to international level, and have written the internet ball-by-ball reports on several of the recent world real tennis championship eliminator matches. For the past three decades I have worked on the Centre Court at Wimbledon overseeing the arrangements for the writing journalists and the competitors, and in that time I have amassed hundreds of journalists and competitors as friends and acquaintances. The Tennis Bookshop philosophy is that only very good condition books are acceptable to my customers, and even now, I stock no titles published after 1935 that are not in their original dust-wrappers. Whereas in the early days from 1988, I issued occasional multi-paged catalogues, for the last few years I have promoted the business by the issue of over fifty quarterly Newsletters, each of six pages. These are mailed to customers in around sixty countries, and these Newsletters are the mainstay of my business. The last five years have seen a colossal growth in the use of the internet and e-mails; and e-mails now constitute about 75% of my order business. I also stage several exhibitions each year at major tennis events here in the UK and occasionally on mainland Europe. My very first exhibition in 1988 was privileged to receive a visit from HM The Queen. Venues where I have exhibited, usually for a week at a time, include Amsterdam, Antwerp, Bournemouth, Brighton, Eastbourne, Frankfurt, London Arena, Nottingham, Olympia, Queen’s Club, Royal Albert Hall, Southampton, Stockholm, and Wembley. By the summer of 2004, the total exhibitions staged was at sixty-four. These exhibitions give me excellent chances actually to meet my customers, which as mainly a postal business, is a rare pleasure. Some clients will only buy books in person, and the exhibitions also give me opportunities to buy tennis books. My stock now runs to about five hundred racket sports titles across the four sports, and includes biographies, annuals, histories, coaching titles, novels, programmes, anthologies, and indeed just about every type of book available in the field. I don’t try to stock every title, but I do try to stock the titles which I think are most sought after by my customers. As far as the date range is concerned, the earliest titles in stock may date from the sixteenth century right up to this week’s newest title. And remember that very good condition is my main principle. My vast bibliography now lists over 5200 titles and these are listed under the categories, of title, author, publisher, date of publication, type of book, ISBN, and so on. The bibliography is amended several times a day as new information comes to hand. The web-site key is to the left of this page. It includes my current newsletter, an archive section containing newsletters published in previous years, and a list of books on Real/Court Tennis and Rackets/Racquets. I specialise in the great, rare and usually very old books in these sports.

 

Address: Oaklands Lane, West Lavington, Midhurst, West Sussex, GU29 0EJ, England
Telephone: 44 (0)1730 816116
Fax: 44 (0) 870-7052288
Website: http://www.tennisbookshop.com/