The Face Pressed Against a Window

Tim Waterstone is one of Britain's most successful businessmen, having built the Waterstone's empire that started with one small bookshop in 1982. In this charming and evocative memoir, he recalls the childhood experiences that led him to become an entrepreneur and outlines the business philosophy that allowed Waterstone's to dominate the bookselling business throughout the country. Tim explores his formative years in a small town in rural England at the end of World War II, and the troubled relationship he had with his father, before moving on to the epiphany he had while studying at Cambridge, which set him on the road to Waterstone's and gave birth to the creative strategy that made him a high street name.

• [A] moving, funny take on business, family and mortality - Jim Armitage, Evening Standard

• The rollicking, page-turning memoir of Britain's biggest book tycoon - Daily Mail

• [Waterstone] writes movingly... Small, poignant images stand out... From such raw clay are great entrepreneurs moulded - The Tablet

• The Face Pressed Against a Window confirms one's sense that this extraordinarily energetic and well-meaning man has been, and still is, a force for good. - Literary Review

Tim Waterstone read English at Cambridge University before moving to Calcutta to work for a broking firm. On returning to England, he worked at WHSmith for eight years, and went on to establish the bookselling chain Waterstones in 1982. In 2018 he was knighted for services to bookselling and charity.