[1] At the age of seventeen, after leaving a Swiss finishing school, Christina Foyle started working at her father's bookshop, and never left.

He bought a copy, but returned it to her a short time later inscribed with the words "For the young lady who liked my book – John Galsworthy.

[1] They usually took place at the Dorchester or the Grosvenor House Hotel, and usually a guest speaker (who included Bertrand Russell and Margaret Thatcher) spoke in praise of a book, as well as the author.

William and Christina Foyle undertook to organize it, and the Right Book Club was launched at a luncheon at the Grosvenor House Hotel in April 1937, with Lord Stonehaven, the recently-retired Chairman of the Conservative Party, presiding.

She resisted unionisation of bookshop staff, sacking most employees just before they had worked there six months, when they would gain limited job protection rights.

Her literary friends included Kingsley Amis, Charles de Gaulle, D. H. Lawrence, Yehudi Menuhin, J.

[8] Among other grants it made a large donation to the appeal to purchase the oldest intact European book, the St Cuthbert Gospel, for the British Library in 2011/12.