THAT’S NOT MY NAME [512]

Who was T.G. Jones?

Did they get their start by opening a newspaper stand next to W.H. Smith? Did they keep a beady eye on each other ever since? Did T.G. Jones also open TV channels and a DIY store chain in the 1980s, again to compete with W.H. Smith? Did T.G. Jones know John Menzies before they sold their also-similar store chain to W.H. Smith? 

Naming a business after someone implies both history and vision: Boots, Cadbury, Sainsbury’s, Selfridges, Debenhams, Cath Kidston, Charlotte Tilbury. Making a name up hopes to imply and aspire the same: the JD Wetherspoon pub chain combines a character from the TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard” with the surname of an ineffectual schoolteacher the founder once had.

But the renaming of the high street stores and retail website of WHSmith to “TG Jones”, prompted by their sale to the private equity group Modella Capital at the end of June 2025, created a name designed to sound close to the original. WHSmith is now being a separate chain focused only on appearing at railway stations, airports and hospitals.

But “TG Jones”? A similarly common name to “Smith”, it also recalls the jeans brand Smith & Jones, the food brand Smith & Jones, the TV series “Alias Smith & Jones”, and the comedy double act Mel Smith & Griff Rhys Jones. As for the initials, “G” is next to “H”, and “T” is close to “W” – my guess is the rhyming “tee gee” was a helpful discovery. But so obviously basing the new name on WHSmith is detrimental to it so long as WHSmith continues to exist elsewhere, a confidence trick that didn’t have to exist.

Name changes made by businesses, or people, usually imply new starts, new approaches. But from the name down, TG Jones is all about continuity: with no material changes to stores announced by the new owners, it remains a bookseller, stationer and newsagent that continues to stock WHSmith-branded products, with newspapers and magazines stocked by the distributor Smiths News, and their floorspace will continue to be shared with Post Office branches and Toys “R” Us concessions. Even the sign above the door is still white text on a royal blue background, the only break with WHSmith being its use of a sans serif typeface.

I had been recommended a documentary on YouTube made by NHK World TV of Japan, which explained that a boom in stationery sales to the general public happened after the 2008 financial crisis when businesses stopped providing employees with pens, paper and notebooks. Either this boom didn’t happen in the UK, or WHSmith couldn’t compete on range or price. 

I mostly use Uni Ball Eye rollerball pens, but these are mostly bought from discount retailer TK Maxx or the supermarket Tesco, and the notebooks I use usually come from Amazon because I want is usually in a particular range, size or page count so specific that a high street store cannot afford the space to stock it. WHSmith, or TG Jones, is there when I want a newsmagazine, which it is likely to have, even if it doesn’t seem to stock “The New Yorker” near me anymore, or if I need a Post Office, or indeed anything I cannot wait for, which is something for which I cannot think of an example.

This is the predicament that now needs to be answered by Modella Capital. They are already owners of the “big box” chain store Hobbycraft, which will have some overlap in their ranges of stationery and art supplies, but their website states, above a picture of their chairman, “successful transactions include... Paperchase”, a specialist stationer once owned by WHSmith, its brand bought by Tesco when it went into administration in 2023. Here’s hoping TG Jones can make something of its name this time around. 

ALL UNDER ONE ROOF [468]

I remember the feeling of “I beg your pardon?” upon seeing, in March 2024, a poster in the window of WHSmith in Oxford of Geoffrey the Giraffe, proclaiming “Toys “R” Us In Store Now”. 

I knew the toy store brand was re-establishing itself following its bankruptcy in 2018, and its concessions in Macy’s department stores in the United States, alongside slowly opening smaller retail stores, was a formula that could work in the UK – their higher-end FAO Schwarz brand, they of the giant piano keyboard, is already found in Selfridges here.

But making a deal to open Toys “R” Us concessions exclusively in WHSmith, in 76 stores by the end of 2024, was perplexing. Known as a combined newsagent, bookseller and stationers – a conglomeration that my sister, when buying magazines and art supplies, described as being both too specific and too generic to be useful – over two hundred branches have already incorporated Post Offices into them, franchises replacing former “Crown” Post Offices closed by the Government-owned group. It wasn’t an obvious choice for a toy shop to open, even if WHSmith did sell some board games along with children’s art and stationery supplies.

Entering the Oxford WHSmith required me to walk past the regular store, making sure you saw what they had to offer first, to reach the mezzanine hosted by, or guarded by, a fibreglass model of Geoffrey on a park bench. I didn’t look through it – I think I just needed to know it existed.

WHSmith has chopped and changed its product range over the years: the 1980s saw it as a major seller of microcomputers and games from Sinclair, Acorn, Amstrad and so on, and it regularly sold music and films too. During the 1980s and 90s, it owned Do-It-All, a chain of DIY stores, and ran the cable TV channels Lifestyle and Screensport. 

But today, its current image is either as a convenience store in airports, train stations and hospitals, once found selling toothpaste for £10, or as a network of tired and cluttered High Street stores. Giving up floor space to Post Offices and Toys “R” Us, then dual- and triple-branding the signs above the front door, suggests WHSmith is diminishing its own presence to adapt to changing tastes. It may operate Smiths News, the largest wholesale supplier of newspapers and magazines, but print sales of both have been in decline for years, and while its reputation as a bookseller caused its inventory system to be adopted worldwide as the ISBN number, stores rarely offer more than a narrow selection of books in comparison to Waterstones or other independent bookshops.

I still make a point of visiting WHSmith: my family’s birthdays and Christmas are punctuated by their greeting cards; it is the only place I have bought “The New Yorker” magazine outside of New York itself; and it is very good if you want one of something particular: one pen, one pencil, one notebook. Supermarkets may offer multipacks of these for less per unit, but only if you are willing to compromise on exactly what you wanted. It has already sold toys and games under their own brands like The Gadget Shop and Past Times, and giving over that part of the store, like in Selfridges and in Tesco (with rival toy shop The Entertainer) makes some business sense.

What is WHSmith meant to be? Whatever it needs to be to keep going.

ON THEE OUR HOPES WE FIX [361]

With the UK still in a period of national mourning as I write this, I decided that discussing the prospects for the country and monarchy can wait for now. 

 

What I do know is that the passing of Queen Elizabeth II will be noted most visibly when the face on the UK’s money and postage stamps begin to change. I have already been witness to this, when the smaller 5 and 10 pence coins introduced in 1990 and 1992 respectively removed one and two shilling coins featuring King George VI, and possibly still George V, from circulation, but that was a change due to progress. Any change this time will be felt more keenly, especially when for the last fifty-five years, the UK has had perhaps the best postage stamps in the world.

 

The Royal Philatelic Collection is one of the largest and most valuable stamp collections in the world. It was begun by King George V, although stamp collecting has been a part of the Royal Family since 1864, not so long after the Royal Mail introduced the Penny Black in 1840 as the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. The Queen continued the collection, currently stored at Windsor Castle.

 

With the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland substituting the monarch’s face for writing its country name on its stamps, Arnold Machin’s standard “definitive” stamp design used since June 1967 is the most simple and effective design possible: the effigy of Queen Elizabeth II, created by Machin in clay, wearing the George IV State Diadem, a crown that includes the roses, thistles and shamrocks that featured separately on the former, more busy standard stamp design; the price value of the stamp; and a single colour used, helping to differentiate from other values of stamp.

I have a stamp collection, mostly kept within one book, and in looking back into it now, the cumulative effect of seeing so many of the “Machin series”, in so many different colours, across so many pages, puts me in mind of Andy Warhol’s pop art screenprints, again reproducing the same image in different colours, except they cost substantially more.

 

This simplicity and effectiveness of this design has doomed attempts to change it. A proposal to change the Queen’s portrait in 1981, just as Machin’s separate portrait for the original set of decimal coinage was also being replaced, was met with a letter from the subject’s private secretary: “Her Majesty is very content with the Machin effigy and thinks that a work of real quality is required if this is to be replaced.” 

 

Other attempts to change the design were rejected by Royal Mail’s Stamp Advisory Committee and by Machin himself, but the Queen’s gentle intervention does make you think that, if your face is the only change that can be made to something, you will more than likely say no. With the Queen having final say over her 1967 portrait, and even requesting the colour of the original 4d. stamp to closely match the original 1840 Penny Black, the sense of personal investment is palpable. It has made this portrait of the Queen into possibly most reproduced picture of a single person there has ever been, or will ever be.

 

Of course, Machin’s design will now have to be changed. My prediction, and hope, is that King Charles’s portrait will simply be used instead, the rest of the stamp staying as it is, but it remains to be seen if the opportunity will be taken to create an entirely new design.