84 Book Crossing Road
Transmission: 2 May 2005, 2030 (BST)

Repeat: Thursday 6 October, 2330 (BST)

84 Book Crossing Road, produced by

Tim Heffer and executive produced by

Alan Hall, has been nominated in the Feature category at the 2006 Sony Radio Academy Awards.

"I picked up copy 19 of 84 down by the river below Charing Cross Station.  It was quite beautiful.  I just wish I could decide whether Helene Hanff was a fictional character or a real character.  I can't decide.  I'm going to leave it at Heathrow airport - I'm heading off to Paris!" [A Canadian tourist in London]

Click for a sample of phone messages

Click here to read Gillian Reynolds' full review in The Daily Telegraph.

If you are visiting this site having found a copy of 84 Charing Cross Road, I'm afraid the broadcast part of the project is now finished, but please do contact us with the story of how you came upon it by emailing info@fallingtree.co.uk

"I do love second hand books that open to the page some previous owner read oftenest." (Helene Hanff)

Falling Tree Productions launched 84 Book Crossing Road by releasing simultaneously on to the streets of London and New York 84 copies of Helene Hanff's 1971 classic 84 Charing Cross Road. Tuesday 5th October was chosen as the launch date because it was on this day in 1949 that Helene Hanff wrote her first letter to Marks & Co., a letter that initiated a long and profound relationship.

Open the cover of any second hand book and you're likely to find intriguing names, dates, dedications and annotations, not to mention personal bookmarks, pressed flowers, the sand from a beach holiday and more.

"I love inscriptions on flyleaves and notes in margins, I like the comradely sense of turning pages someone else turned, and reading pages some one long gone has called my attention to." (Helene, April 16, 1951)

The 84 copies of 84 Charing Cross Road were released in London and New York by friends, family and colleagues of Hanff and Doel, including Frank Doel's daughter Sheila and Helene Hanff's nephew Jim Ulrich.

The programme reveals how the book has touched people's lives, creating chains linking readers across the Atlantic and from places as diverse as Vienna, Namibia and Derby!

84 Book Crossing Road can be heard again at 2330 (BST) on 6th October 2005 on BBC Radio 4 or at www.bbc.co.uk/radio4

Produced by Tim Heffer and Alan Hall