Reginald Albert Last, book buyer: born Woburn Sands, Bedfordshire 4 June 1903; Head Book Buyer, W.H. Smith 1957-65; married 1939 Marjorie Holbrook (died 2001; two daughters); died Sevenoaks, Kent 5 May 2002. The previous year, Penguin Books had been prosecuted for publishing Lady Chatterley’s Lover While Last admired W.H. Smith’s policy of not stocking material deemed offensive, he agreed with the jury which found Penguin not guilty of publishing an obscene article.

Against strong resistance from inside the company, he successfully argued that W.H. Smith should stock it, and bought copies to be safely tucked away until the final verdict.Reginald Albert Last was born in Woburn Sands, Bedfordshire, to Edith and Edward Last. The youngest of five, he decided not to follow his two brothers into their father’s business as a wheelwright. After an education at the local school which was disrupted by staff leaving for the First World War, he applied for a shop assistant’s job advertised in the window of W.H. Smith, and began his career with the firm in 1917, at the age of 14. Thanks to its station bookstalls and circulating library, W.H. Smith was a household name; Reg Last believed the company would offer him scope to progress.

It also provided the education which would be vital to his success, inspiring an informed passion for books which lasted a lifetime.From Woburn Sands, where he was quick to learn (and to devour the contents of the lending library), Last was transferred to Chippenham. He started work before breakfast, collecting newspapers from the station and organising deliveries. Sometimes he did rounds himself, pedalling to outlying villages on a red W.H Smith bicycle with a pannier. Having worked in the shop all day, he would return to the station after supper for six copies of the Evening Standard which were thrown from the eight-fifteen London to Bristol express so that the butcher and his friends could read the horse-racing results.Last struggled on his wages, despite cheap lodgings (with a weekly soak at the local baths and cups of tea at the YMCA), and was bullied by the manager. When the regional superintendent bumped into Last’s mother in Woburn Sands and asked how he was getting on, she told him.

Last was instantly transferred to Bath, working briefly in the kiosk outside the station before joining the Milsom Street branch, which carried a wide stock for its middle-class client?. Here he gained essential bibliographical knowledge through unpacking publishers’ parcels and dealing with customer orders. Most importantly, by watching how the lending librarian made it her business to recommend the right books to individual clients, he learnt the secret of personal bookselling which ensured his popularity as manager, from 1946 to 1951, of W.H. Smith’s most prestigious shop, Truslove & Hanson in Sloane Street, London (where he once sold a set of A.A.