My father, Ike Ong, who has died aged 74, was a redoubtable bookseller. In 1979 he was a co-founder of Skoob Books, a secondhand bookshop in London that started out in a Covent Garden lockup that had previously housed market wheelbarrows. After a falling out between the partners (stories vary), he ran Skoob Books for the next 25 years.
Selling general and academic secondhand books was no mean feat, with commercial rents usually increasing significantly at each review, but this part of Ike’s life was defined by an optimism characteristic of those who grew up in the 1960s. He could be erratic, but also combined gravitas with great energy and creativity.
