Gilbert Bankual: House of Hodge volunteer

Everyone has a story. Book seller Gilbert Bankual loves the ways book collections reveal people’s lives – just one of the reasons he volunteers at House of Hodge on Blackstock Road. Interview by Nicola Baird

Over coffee (double espresso for him, decaf for Islington Faces) at The Blackstock Kitchen, just a few doors down from House of Hodge on Blackstock Road, Gilbert Bankual has so many stories to tell about this charity bookshop.

Born in Marseille and still very much a Provencal, Gilbert has a long connection to Islington. He’s worked here and has volunteered at House of Hodge for the past two years. He and his wife, Catherine Shakespeare Lane, got married at the old town hall in Finsbury and have lived together in N4 for nearly 30 years. But the original link is thanks to knowing an Islingtonian couple, Sasha and Michael Young from Gibson Square, who bought a holiday home in what in a tiny French village, Auribeau, a year after Gilbert’s family purchased one in 1964.

FOLLOW ISLINGTON FACES a new interview is published regularly.

For the record Lord Young of Dartington was a social activist. In 1945 he wrote the Labour party manifesto. He set up the Consumer Association in 1956 and later co-founded the University of the Third Age. See this moving obituary from his son, writer Toby Young.

“After Catherine and I got married, Michael invited us to an expensive restaurant. And then, just before pudding, he said, ‘Sorry I’ve got to go, I’ve got a meeting with Desmond Tutu!” says Gilbert with a big grin. He has many anecdotes from this friendship with Sasha and Michael, ranging from contacts that led to jobs – including time in Devon at Dartington Theatre College where Michael was a trustee – and, beautifully, a first meeting with Catherine in Gibson Square.

Bookish life

This morning Gilbert’s already made three sales for House of Hodge on line. But you’ll also often find him in the shop – though only if one of the shop’s volunteers (there are usually 10-15, plus three trustees) can’t make their scheduled day. Islington Faces loves a chat at the bookshop, which often gets crowded at weekends, with whoever is on the till.

“For a week after Blackstock Road was named one of the coolest streets in London (see this Time Out article from November 2025 people were taking photos of House of Hodge from the opposite pavement,” says Gilbert. “But House of Hodge is well known anyway, maybe from the website. People sometimes come from New York or other faraway places because they’ve found out it is a place to visit in London. One day, two German girls told me they travel here regularly because ‘it’s expensive buying books in Berlin’,” he says.

Gilbert’s got history himself when it comes to travelling for books.

While working as an assistant to science specialist book dealer Rick Watson in Hampstead he was sent with less than 24-hours’ notice to Denmark to collect a copy of 16^th century astronomer Tycho Brahe’s pamphlet, De Nova Stella (On the New Star, 1573). “Just a few copies were printed,” explains Gilbert. “The asking price was £40,000 but it was sold for £1 million. It was a tiny book that I put under my thin woolly jumper to keep it safe on the flight home. The woman beside me could see the shape and clearly felt slightly uneasy, thinking that maybe I was carrying some explosive device. So, I took it out, flipped through a few pages and then put it back in place. She must have thought I was very odd!”

He’s also collated books for the same dealer. “Sometimes in old books the pagination is not always following, and often it’s not that the text is out of sync, it’s because paper costs money, so if a printer in those days made a mistake with the page number, they would leave it. “Because I could read English, German, Dutch and Latin I could check books in all these languages as they were the main languages in science from the Middle Ages till the 19th century. Once I had to check two copies of a Newton manuscript, for instance. Mathematics and Latin were the worst things at school for me, but I managed to find two differences,” he says smiling.

Turns out books may be a huge part of Gilbert’s life but he has also worked as a builder; translator (American English to French); cook while running his own B&B in Normandy; has sold textiles, been a Nigerian pottery-maker; playwright and director. He’s also written children’s books in French and you can also find his witty book about phishing, online, called Spam, scan, thank you, Ma’am

=================================

Places Gilbert Bankual loves in Islington

1. “I cook, so going out for food I don’t do often. I like The Blackstock Kitchen (136) run by Rohan, and sometimes go to Beam for coffee (184). The French Market (16) is good for bread, and Frenchie’s little treats.”
2. For fish and meat on Blackstock Road I shop at Nourished Communities (183). I also go to Al Baraka for more French and Algerian treats (46) –”
3. “Near Hodge, is Giacco’s Bar, a little place on 176 Blackstock Road with chairs outside – it’s a bit noisy inside for old people like me. But the food is good and they have pop up chefs. My last visit was saying goodbye to a House of Hodge volunteer who was Mexican, and they happened to have a Mexican chef. I also like The Little Sardegna (170) for authentic Sardinian treats.”
4. “At Highbury Barn I go to the butcher, the fishmonger, Five Boys, La Fromagerie and to the very efficient post office regularly when I’ve sold books for Hodge on ebay.
5. “I used to enjoy the Regent’s Canal walk in Islington, but I haven’t done this for a while.”

===================================

House of Hodge

Being an N4 local, a charity bookshop, like the House of Hodge, was a place Gilbert liked to browse. One day Doreen Rolph, who started it in 2009 as a cat charity, asked if he could help collect some of the books being donated in north London where she had good connections with people in Hampstead and Highgate.

As Gilbert drove to his job in this area it seemed like an easy ask.

In fact, there were so many books at one point that there was even a second shop across the street. “Doreen was chaos, but she knew what things were,” says Gilbert. “When Doreen stopped because she had Parkinson’s, the new board managed, just before Brexit, to get a grant from the EU for shelving and organising the bookshop in the way it is now.”

The charity’s mission is now ‘to support (1) the welfare of small animals and (2) to support child and adult literacy’. The latter is achieved by making donations to specialist organisations like Elizabeth House round the corner from Hodge.

According to a pie chart poster in House of Hodge, dating from 2024, funds of £21,000 were shared with RSPCA Finsbury Park, Blue Cross, Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, StreetVet, Woodgreen Animal Shelter, British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Songbird Survival, Ministry of Stories (set up by local Nick Hornby), and Read Easy. House of Hodge also has a close relationship with the community centre at Elizabeth House, in fact Gilbert’s next task today is to drop off a bag of cookbooks for the centre’s latest project.

But it’s the book collecting he loves best.

“It’s always a surprise, you never know,” he says explaining the draw of looking through new book donations. “The books we receive cover Islington, but also Hampstead, Highgate, part of Hackney, Muswell Hill and Crouch End. Blackstock Road was very poor for a long time, but the rest of Islington was not. Some residents were wealthy, educated people so the books we see reflect the population of Islington. And what I really like when we have a donation is often we don’t know much about the people, but then through their books you can retrace the life of someone.”

He especially loves finding “notes in books, names, dates and other personal details. In Muswell Hill I once went to an extraordinary house that had been empty for a long time. It looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for 20 or 30 years, which is odd. Everything on the wall was there as it had been. The books were shelved behind glass with a lot of poetry and political prose. I did some research and I found out that they were owned by a Jewish woman who had died about 25 years ago on the same day as her sister,” he says dramatically.

“You can rebuild somebody’s life just through their books – there’s much of people’s lives in books. Once I found £260 pounds in old bank notes in a book on architecture. You find things, photos, invoices (that I destroy immediately) but also little bookmarks, inscriptions for birthdays and so on,” he adds.

Sometimes it’s the book that’s the real star says Gilbert sharing another story about an amazing find. “I found a small Bible that had been made in Palestine and bound in cedar wood from Jerusalem. It was a present to this lady from a friend who had travelled there. But it just happened that it was published before Israel was created in 1948. The publisher’s address was Jerusalem, Palestine, so you go back in history as well. I love that the books talk.”

Summing up

Speciality shops like House of Hodge, which are easy to drop into and help us recycle and pass on our reading material, give a huge boost to people living around the Blackstock Road – something that the Time Out article somehow nailed. That’s because a charity bookshop helps some of us clean up, it help raises funds for good causes and offers a space to chat as well as a chance to take on a meaningful role.  “Some of the regulars don’t always want to buy a book, but just want to come to have a chat. And it’s not just with me,” says Gilbert smiling. “I’ve heard other volunteers saying that. As a volunteer at House of Hodge you are there to listen and not to contradict anyone whatever their opinions.”

Now 76, Gilbert says the experience volunteering has also helped him meet more people. “Hodge has allowed me to feel more integrated in this area. I’ve lived in Islington since 1997, but I didn’t know many people other than a few very close neighbours, and not people on Blackstock Road. Through being in the shop quite often, I realised that there was a community that really worked. And that’s good because when you retire, what do you do? I don’t watch TV, so life becomes a bit boring – that’s another reason why I like to be involved with House of Hodge.”

Now that the autumn has arrived perhaps Gilbert’s passion for books – and the stories they tell about their past owners – will help inspire you to do more reading. Whether it does or not make sure you visit the amazing secondhand bookshop, House of Hodge, in the very heart of Islington.

More info

• House of Hodge is at 174 Blackstock Road. https://www.houseofhodge.org/ Email:  househodge174@gmail.com
• Spam, scan, thank you, Ma’am by Gilbert Bankual https://www.amazon.co.uk/pam-cam-Thank-You-Maam-ebook/dp/B00O63SADG
• You Tube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjUg82vrtb-BLYMAdtMJJ4w

Over to you

If you’d like to nominate someone to be interviewed who grew up, lives or works in Islington, or suggest yourself, please let me know, via nicolabaird dot green at gmail dot com. If you enjoyed this post you might like to look at the A-Z  index, or search by interviewee’s roles or Meet Islingtonians to find friends, neighbours and inspiration. Thanks for stopping by. Nicola