BROADCASTS.com

Author/historian Stuart Kells has been chasing rare books and other bookish treasures since childhood. In the 1980s he went for classic sci-fi paperbacks from Ace and Dell, and authors such as Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein. \xa0 When he moved to Melbourne in the summer of 1989 he was amazed by the city\u2019s bookshops, especially secondhand shops - notably Alice\u2019s and Sainsbury\u2019s in Carlton. When\xa0\u200bhe\xa0wasn\u2019t looking for books\u200b here he\xa0was fossicking in the Co-op bookshop at Melbourne University, or hunting for\xa0\u200bthem\xa0at markets and fetes. For the past 26 years\u200b he's been a regular at Camberwell Market where great books can be found, along with almost everything else. Vividly remembered finds include Iain Banks and Vikram Seth firsts; classic Australian crime pulps; rare maps; and advertising and ephemera of every kind. \xa0 I connected with Stuart recently via Zoom to talk about Penguin and the Lane Brothers, \u200bhis revealing, myth-busting book about the intimate partnership of Allen, Richard and John Lane \u2013 and how it explains the success of Penguin Books, the twentieth century\u2019s "greatest publishing house." We talk about the spirit of daring and creative opposition that drove the brothers to publish so many quality books on such a massive scale at such affordable prices \u2013 and how together they achieved a revolution in modern book publishing.\xa0