Independent bookshops remain some of Britain’s loveliest places. Quaint, charming, precarious, they are a bulwark against blandness and offer refuge in an age of doomscrolling. The bookseller stacking the shelves is likely to be local, almost certainly poorly paid and a bit moth-eaten. I should know – I own an independent bookshop. We are a flock of sheep, which is why it has proved so easy for a wolf to slip into our clothing.

Walk down a high street today and you may well pass a bookshop that looks just right. Handwritten recommendation cards. Tastefully curated tables. Knowledgeable booksellers. The name over the door reassuringly local. Nothing here suggests scale, leverage or distant ownership. You may feel a small glow at having rejected Amazon. Sadly, that glow would be misplaced, for without knowing it, you are simply buying your books from a different American billionaire: Paul Singer.

Over the past decade, a growing number of bookshops seemingly trading under unique identities have been quietly folded into a single multinational retail group, as part of Book Retail Midco Limited.

Its strategy is simple: expand. This is done either by buying up venerable brands (Waterstones, Hatchards, Foyles, Blackwell’s, Hodges Figgis), or by........

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