BLACKWELL'S, owners of the world-famous bookshop in Broad Street, Oxford, are bidding to buy Cambridge bookshop Heffers.

Heffers, one of the largest remaining independent UK booksellers, is up for sale after 122 years of family ownership.

The acquisition of Heffers, described by Blackwell's as "an institution in its own right", would mark a break in the Oxford company's long standing policy of keeping out of Cambridge.

Blackwell's chairman Julian Blackwell told the Oxford Mail: "We feel we've got to have a go. We are a family business and feel we could look after Heffers better than anyone else.

"Nicholas Heffer is an old friend and he rang me. His father knew my father so we go back a long way. If the price were right we could stand by the staff and keep up the business ethos."

Blackwell Retail has said that it has enough reserves to buy Heffers "as long as the price is reasonable".

Heffers has ten branches, including its 22,000 sq ft flagship shop in Trinity Street, Cambridge. Six of these are bookshops and four are stationers.

It reported £20.6m sales for the year to March 1997 and an operating profit of £700,318.

Chairman of Heffers, Nicholas Heffer, whose great-grandfather founded the Cambridge business in 1876, said: "It's a similar company in many ways and it's an extremely good company, but we want to listen to others too."

Blackwell Retail earlier this year bought four branches of Leeds-based Austicks after the Austicks family put that chain on the market.

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