Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Dunedin bookshop in world's top 10

Updated at 10:09 pm on 17 December 2009

An old fashioned store in Dunedin has been named one of the 10 best bookshops in the world.

Octagon Books in Moray Place is listed at number seven in the Irish Independent newspaper's top 10.

The second-hand bookshop has no phone, computer or eftpos machine and uses a till that is still in pounds, shillings and pence.

The newspaper describes the bookshop as like stepping back in time, to a nineteen fifties English village.

Owner Richard McIntyre was unaware the store was in the running for such an accolade.

"We've just tried to keep it like an old-fashioned bookshop," he said. "We've got clocks ticking on the wall, and the smell of an old bookshop and so forth.

"We haven't really pushed ourselves. People discover us, rather than us going out to them."

Mr McIntyre's store joined bookshops from Amsterdam to Cape Town named in the top 10.

Copyright © 2009, Radio New Zealand