At the Sign of the Harlequin’s Bat My Years with Cyril Beaumont Isabelle Stoughton In London , a few steps from the bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road, made famous by the film starring Ann Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, and Dame Judi Densch, stood the quirky dance bookshop at Number 75 operated by Cyril Beaumont, At the Sign of the Harlequin’s Bat. “Mr. B,” as he is known in this memoir, was a master of all things balletic as writer, publisher, critic, and historian. The author, Isabelle Stoughton, was hired as his assistant in the shop in 1953, which had remained largely unchanged since it opened in 1910. Here she reveals Mr. B’s character as showing both good humor and irascibility, not concealing his displeasure to customers he disliked, yet kissing her on the cheeks every morning. At the end of her employment in 1956 the author marries a customer, a medical student with more than a ballet interest in the shop.
104 pages, paperbound ISBN 9781852731502