Oldspeak Books opened in a converted chapel in the pretty Suffolk village of Long Melford in June 2025. Its founder, Joanne May, saw that her England and the wider West are beset from without and within, and she wanted to do something about it.
Like George Orwell, who took his pseudonymous surname from a local river, Jo lives in a censorious age in which institutions falsify language and enforce a kind of historical and cultural amnesia. Oldspeak sells old books and good books, including imports, foreign translations, and high-quality editions from small presses. Jo calls it a “counter-narrative” of “the tried and true”: Oldspeak against Newspeak, the deceitful jargon of Orwell’s 1984.
I met Joanne a few months later. I was speaking at the Battle of Ideas, a free speech conference in London, and she was running the Oldspeak stall. Joanne’s books mixed fiction with the reading list for a college course on classical liberalism and Scrutonian conservatism, and included highbrow books from mainstream publishers and small presses. One of our daughters is studying Latin, so my wife bought Unfortunately She Was a Nymphomaniac, a promising account of the women of Rome’s imperial family by the feminist and Guardian columnist Joan Smith. I picked Driss Ghali’s A Counter-History of French Colonization. We chatted with Joanne about Daphne du Maurier’s lesser novels and how a chunk of the late Roger Scruton’s library was coming to Oldspeak as a permanent testimonial. It was the kind of bibliophilic conversation that gives you hope.
On Aug. 7, Joanne closed Oldspeak’s physical shop and retreated to an online-only business. She explained why in an X post: “Over time, it became increasingly difficult to maintain a welcoming environment due to the constant hostility I experienced. The uncertainty around which customers were genuine made it hard for me to greet everyone warmly, and my customer service suffered.”
Imagine that a woman opens an Islamic bookstore to go with the 150 or so that Britain already has, or opens a store specializing in Jewish texts or African or Indian literature, and then finds herself forced to close because of “constant hostility” and harassment inside the shop. There would be a national outcry. TV crews would vox-pop day drinkers outside the Black Lion pub. The local members of Parliament would pose outside the shop and denounce “hate” in all its forms. The prime minister would call for a “national conversation.” The police might invoke the Public Order Act (1986) and the Protection From Harassment Act (1997), both of which allow for custodial sentences. A spasm of the transatlantic algorithm would reach Manhattan, and the New York Times would run a 2,000-word investigation. It would imply that Oldspeak got what it deserved.
Why? Joanne May sells the wrong kind of books to the wrong sort of people who, like her, have the wrong opinions. She hung the Union and St. George’s Cross flags outside her shop. She likes Rupert Lowe’s nationalist party, Restore Britain; not my cup of tea, but also not a hanging offense. Before she was forced to dissolve her shop into the ether, Oldspeak hosted book clubs and a speaker series. Speakers included conservatives such as John O’Sullivan (who wrote speeches for Margaret Thatcher), Ellen Fantini of The European Conservative and Ethan Rundell of Vauban Books, but also the ex-firefighter and union leader Paul Embery and the “Anglofuturist” tech theorist Alexander Adams, who don’t fit the political binary. Joanne calls Oldspeak “conservative” and “dissident.” If it is “dissident” to believe in free speech and “conservative” to talk about books and ideas, then we are in deep trouble.
I asked Joanne for an interview. Rather than risk being seen as a “victim,” she prefers not to talk about it. She hopes to reopen a shop elsewhere. Somewhere, presumably, that doesn’t attract pseudonymous emails calling her books “right-wing trash,” libelous blog posts from local gender activists calling her books “racist filth” and her “far-right” and “thuggish and extremist,” and chummy requests from the local realtor that she take down her flags because “there are a lot of local residents who are not happy with the messages they convey.”
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I contacted the local MP, the Conservatives’ James Cartlidge. Mr. Cartlidge is on vacation with his family, so I’ve asked his assistant to arrange an interview for when he’s back. I’ll let you know whether he agrees that Joanne May’s rights have been infringed, and what that might say about the state of free speech in Britain. Meanwhile, I shall buy some late-summer reading from Oldspeak’s website, starting with the racist filth of Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men and that notorious far-right tract, Mirabel Osler’s A Gentle Peal for Chaos: Reflections from an English Garden.
Oldspeak Bookshop’s online shop is at www.oldspeakbookshop.co.uk.
Dominic Green (@drdominicgreen) is a Washington Examiner columnist and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.