Foyle started working at her father’s bookshop at age 17, and never left: Foyle’s, on Charing Cross Road in London’s West End, grew to 30 miles of shelves of books under her management. The store, started in 1904 by her father, was not known for modern efficiency: Miss Foyle, as she liked to be called, refused to allow books to be ordered over the telephone, and made clerks fill in all sales slips by hand — cash registers were not allowed until recently.
But she was known for her Literary Luncheons, where authors and customers could mix. The literary luminaries included Kingsley Amis, Charles de Gaulle, D.H. Lawrence, Yehudi Menuhin, J.B. Priestley, George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Thatcher, Evelyn Waugh and H.G. Wells. Foyle died June 8 at her home in Essex at 88.