James Thin

James Thin's catalogues seemed to have a puzzling and arbitrary number of pence following the number of pounds, writes D. Ieuan Lloyd [further to the obituary by Tam Dalyell, 5 June].

For example, books could be priced at pounds 3.15, pounds 7.35, pounds 12.60. I discovered the reason for this was his quirky but delightful desire to continue to price books in guineas and then to decimalise the resulting figure.