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Books

Madly Modern Mary overcomes childhood hardships to become the Queen of Shops

Nicky Haslam admires the thoroughly extraordinary Mary Portas, monarch of the malls

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

14 March 2015

9:00 AM

Shop Girl Mary Portas

Doubleday, pp.288, £16.99, ISBN: 9780857522863

In this autobiography, Mary Portas doesn’t dip into the fabled store of her talents by giving an account of her countrywide progress as monarch and oracle of retail, but conjures a nostalgic cornucopia of the mid- 20th-century brands and frankly cheesy TV personalities (she often dressed up as Jimmy Savile) that dazzled her youthful Hertfordshire eyes.

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