MORE than 50 years after To Kill A Mockingbird people in Oxford queued just that little bit longer to get hold of Harper Lee’s second novel Go Set A Watchman this morning.

Grace Wierenga, from California, and her husband Brett, from Michigan, were first in the queue this morning and got free copies of Harper Lee’s second novel.

The couple queued outside Blackwell's Bookshop in Broad Street from 5.30am this morning to secure their place at the front of the line

The 24-year-old waitress who studied English at college said: “Brett knows I love anything literary and we saw that Blackwell’s were launching it and giving out a free copy.

“I loved To Kill A Mockingbird, I read it as a child.

“I’m excited to read it, it’s been a long, long time but I’m a little afraid it might change my view of her previous novel.”

By the time the store opened its doors at 8am there were more than 20 people from countries around the world lining up

Blackwell’s events manager James Orton said: “There were about 10 Americans but also people from Germany, Switzerland and Poland.

“Many of them bought multiple copies and we have had a steady stream of people coming in since.

“It’s been really successful for us and from our point of view it’s most of the staff’s favourite book and we are just as excited as the customers to go home and read it.

“It will be our biggest book of the year.”

About 15 people queued up outside Waterstones in Broad Street ahead of the shop opening at 8am, an hour earlier than usual.

Manager Nicky James said: “It has been pretty mad down here.

“We had a modest queue outside the door at 8am so we opened up our coffee shop and sold copies to those customers.

“This evening we are going to have the Oxford University silver band playing folk tunes and we are going to serve mint juleps and pecan pie.

“The people buying the book are aged between 9 and 90 really. It has just got that mass appeal that you would expect.

“We had 150 pre-orders and we expect it to get busier later today in the shop.

“I have worked in the industry for 25 years and the last recollection I have to something of this scale is the Harry Potter books.

“This is the biggest thing we have seen in 10 years.”