A man who earned a reputation as Britain’s rudest bookseller is to quit and “not a moment too soon”, according to relieved residents fed up with him driving tourists away from their Yorkshire Dales village.

Hawes, the home of Wensleydale cheese, is saying goodbye to Steve Bloom, who admits he is a man who “doesn’t butter his parsnips” when dealing with members of the public.

The 63-year-old hit the headlines earlier this year when the was criticised for asking visitors for a 50p entry fee to Bloomindales, his secondhand book shop in Hawes.

The chairman of the local parish council branded him “the bookseller from hell” following a stream of complaints about his behaviour. Bloom admitted he was wrong to call one customer a “pain in the arse”. “I regretted it as soon as I said it,” he said.

Bloom, who has said he is “not really a people person”, is selling up – partly to escape complaining customers.

His policy of charging 50p entry – designed to stop browsers from wasting his time – caused constant rows with his customers, but he refused to back down.

After a storm of protest about his Basil Fawlty-esque rants at those who dared question his entry fee, he managed to avoid offending anyone for almost four months.

But lately the outraged letters to the council have started again.

This month two customers complained about him – one of them saying a group of 15 customers were so shocked by the “rude and patronising little man” they packed up and left town.

The second-hand bookshop Bloomindales. Photograph: Tom Wilkinson/PA

Another wrote: “Hi, we had a pleasant visit to Hawes today, that is up until we visited the local bookshop Bloomindales. What a very unpleasant rude man this is. I asked for a specific author of book and he was trying to charge me to look around.

“I felt very uneasy and uncomfortable in his shop and left straight away after this. I was so taken back and shocked that my family actually left Hawes altogether, such a shame the trip ended in this way, a discredit to Hawes.”



But even as he announced he had sold up, Bloom was unapologetic and refused to accept he had been driven out by his enemies on the local council.

”I hope that none of the people who have been trying to drive me out are claiming any kind of victory, because it isn’t. I have left of my own free will,” he said.



“It got very difficult sitting in my shop listening to people talking about me as the man who charges 50p entry. I will not miss the moaning. I’d be sitting there and have to listen to people saying ‘this is the shop that was on the news’ and ‘he’s the one who charges entry just to look at his books’ and it gets to me.

“I gained a certain notoriety and I suppose much of it was of my own invention but I don’t have regrets.”

He added: “The council were desperate to get rid of me but they didn’t manage. I won that battle.”

Councillor John Blackie, who represents Hawes on Richmondshire district council, has led the campaign to force Bloom to either change his ways or leave the town, and once described him as “the bookseller from hell”.

In an email to one of the most recent complainants he spelled out the town’s delight that he would be quitting.

Blackie wrote: “In the opinion of very many local people, the parish council, and myself, it is not a moment too soon and we cannot wait to wave goodbye forever to a trader that in his appalling and utterly unacceptable attitude towards his customers (and it was not just visitors – he could be equally rude to local people) represents the very opposite of all we show and do to extend a very warm Upper Dales welcome to those that come to Hawes for a day out, for their holidays, as local people for their day-to-day business.”

He is hopeful about the future: “If you call into the bookshop post-Bloom you will find the couple who have taken it on are very welcoming and have absolutely no intention of charging an entrance fee.”