Talking shop with the queen of the high street

Memoir: Shop Girl: A Memoir. By Mary Portas. Doubleday, €20. Reviewed by Sara Keating

Mary Portas: the retail guru structures her life stories around items coveted and purchased through her childhood to her teenage years. Picture: Martin Godwin
Mary Portas: the retail guru structures her life stories around items coveted and purchased through her childhood to her teenage years. Picture: Martin Godwin

‘Even as a six-year-old”, Mary Portas understood that “there is a world enclosed in the four tiny letters of the word ‘shop’.” Her father was a salesman, delivering wholesale produce to grocers across London, and the young Mary loved nothing more than helping him on his rounds, gazing at “the shelves ...