Book dealer Martin Woolf Orskey, who died in December, aged 93, was a familiar figure in the trade. Indeed, OF Snelling, in his book Rare Books and Rarer People, published in 1982, described him as the “prince of all the book runners – for this is what he was to begin with, and he would be the first to admit it.”
The son of Jewish refugees from Poland, his first job was with the book auctioneers Hodgsons where he spent 15 years – in his spare time scouring London shops (and occasionally further afield) for books of merit, honing his near photographic memory and developing an uncanny knack (remarked on by many who knew him) for turning up exceptional rarities. With his wife Josie (they met at a dance and it was love at first sight), he set up a tiny wedge-shaped shop in the King’s Road, next to Ciancimino’s antique shop.