It all began in October 1949. Helene Hanff from Manhattan writes a letter to Messrs Marks & Co, an antiquarian book store at 84, Charing Cross Road in London, inquiring about second-hand books. “She would rather order the books up long distance and ship wadded up paper money in the mail than shop the Barnes & Nobles of Manhattan.”

Her warm and witty letters are responded to by stodgy and proper ones from Frank Doel, the shop manager. Soon, an unusual relationship of letters and literature surface between them and she becomes “Dear Helene” for him and he becomes “Frankie” for her: “Now listen Frankie, it’s going to be a long cold winter and I babysit in the evenings and I need reading matter. Don’t sit around, go find me some books!”

She also sends packages of food etc. to him and the other workers in the store during the war, eventually making friends with all the staff at Marks who, in return, search diligently for her off-the-wall, hard-to-find editions. There are several times that she tries to get herself to London, a luxury that her frugal existence as an unsuccessful writer doesn’t allow. The bond lasts for twenty years, ending only with the death of Frank in 1969, which leaves her devastated.

“The correspondence – from Britain’s post-war austerity to the height of the Swinging Sixties – was full of warmth, humour and humanity. If our notion of the ‘special relationship’ between Britain and America means anything at all, it is embodied in the pages of Hanff’s little book,” says Monica Porter in The Telegraph. This slim, unlikely bestseller was later made into a stage play, television play, and a film.

Published in 1970.