Foyles doyenne leaves 50m to found charity in her name

CHRISTINA FOYLE, the autocratic and eccentric proprietor of the world' s most famous bookshop, left around 50 million in her will to establish a charitable foundation that will bear her name.

The legacy, known only to her closest family and friends, was revealed by her solicitor Ian Marsh today when her will was published. It shows a net estate of 59,029,581, a figure made up of property, art and other investments.

Miss Foyle, as she liked to be called, died last June aged 88. She called her nephew Christopher Foyle to her deathbed and asked him to carry on the family's celebrated Charing Cross Road book store. He is modernising the shop, introducing computer technology and Internet sales for the first time.

Apart from a few bequests to relatives, friends and charities including 5,000 to the Battersea Dogs Home and 5,000 to the Royal Society of Arts, the bulk of her estate will be used to set up the foundation.

Mr Marsh said: "We've only just got the grant of probate and we're in the process of administering the estate at the moment, so it's early days. But the executors have been given a general brief to establish a charitable foundation in her name.

"It has not been decided yet what form this will take. That will be settled in the coming months."

Miss Foyle was the daughter of William Foyle, elder of the brothers who founded the bookshop. At the age of 19 she launched the celebrated literary luncheons and with her husband, Ronald Batty, a childhood friend, she developed book clubs, an art gallery and publishing interests.

She lived at the 12th-century Beeleigh Abbey in Maldon, Essex, where she kept 15 cats and a dog, Bobby, which she once revealed had a nasty habit of biting her accountant. Peacocks roamed the lawns and much of her art collection featured in the abbey's rooms. She ran Foyle's with a firm hand and in later years the store reflected her eccentric style. She and her late husband viewed it as a personal fiefdom, immune to the exigencies of a world in which the customer was king.

According to Christopher Foyle, it was a regime that could not last. "We are engaged in a fight for survival," Mr Foyle said recently. "Unless something is done now it could easily slip away."

New electronic tills are being installed to replace the old system of queuing for chits and computers are being brought in to make the job of tracking down a book easier. Transient workers who seemed to run the place are being replaced by better-trained, long-term staff, Mr Foyle said.

The puzzle of why it took so long to get someone to answer a telephone in the shop was solved when, after her death, it was revealed she gave instructions to simply let it ring.

Miss Foyle was passionate about books and, as a young woman in the Thirties, she wrote to Hitler asking him to send her Jewish books seized by the Nazis and destined to be burned.

Her executors, her nephew Clive Eckert and a solicitor, are expected to consider various options for the foundation. If, as is believed, more than 50 million will be available the choice will be wide.

Computer tycoon Peter Ogden recently assigned 25 million to support bright children from poor families at independent schools.

His scheme is expected to help educate 500 pupils at 40 schools.

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