How often have I grumpily disposed of a colour supplement in a newspaper with the remark ‘it’s all about clothes and things’. Yet, from a distance, the subject of our buying habits is a rewarding one, embodying historical change, class, inventions, national growth, decay and much more.

Alison Adburgham’s Shops and Shopping 1800–1914, published in 1964, is on my shelves. It must have been one of the first books I ever reviewed. The author has long been dead, and so now are many of the big department stores that she cites in the final chapter, ‘The Stores Reach Their Zenith’. Where now are Peter Robinsons, Debenham & Freebody, Bourne & Hollingsworth and all – and where too Woolworths (‘Woolies’), a fixture then on every significant high street? The answer to this and to much else is to be found in Annie Gray’s new work (Woolies collapsed in 2009, only months short of what would have been its centenary). 

Annie Gray is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a broadcaster. Her new book, which takes in virtually every major city in the UK, is both brisk and copious – almost too much so: she might perhaps have covered slightly fewer cities. But her account of the