Spillers claims to be the oldest record shop in the world, tracing its history back 105 years, when it originally sold phonograph players and shellac records.
Much of the book, which dates from the 10th century AD, was rendered illegible in the late 19th century by misguided academics who used shellac to varnish it.
Each had its own way of moving through the land and each had its own odor of passage: the railway tracks cut straight ahead, asking no questions of the bedrock through which it sliced, the wrought-iron rails smelling of axle grease and the wooden slats of rancid, licorice-scented shellac.