Toyshops

It is hard to enter any London bookstores — memorably disdained by V.S. Naipaul as now resembling "toyshops" — without being assailed by a dictator-size poster of some bullet-headed pugilist, his lips pursed in a macho moue, the apparently unhappy author of a novel whose title is invariably a punchy single word, such as Porno. ❋ Unknown (2004)

Instead you slouch away to search the internet, phone the toyshops, in a desperate hope. ❋ Unknown (2010)

Whether you're 4 or 40, no one can walk away from the ne plus ultra of toyshops without a grin - or perhaps playing Heart & Soul on the oversized rollout keyboard. ❋ Unknown (2010)

While in town, we managed lunch, returned the unwanted pushchair and got a refund, swapped a top without nursing straps for one with, and looked in three toyshops for baby dolls. ❋ Ailbhe (2006)

It doesn't really support any claims of toyshops at the North Pole, but you knew that already. ❋ Unknown (2005)

On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a Sunday; only taverns, toyshops, and other holiday magazines, keep open doors. ❋ Unknown (2005)

While the prices dropped due to increased efficiency, the added loss of jobs/small toyshops etc, didn't happen without some deal of pain. ❋ Unknown (2005)

Nothing better has happened to me since I used to be taken to look at the toyshops the day before ❋ Unknown (1901)

In the toyshops it is sometimes called the "Chinese rings," though there seems to be no authority for the description, and it more frequently goes by the unsatisfactory name of "the puzzling rings." ❋ Henry Ernest Dudeney (1893)

The new beaux and the old ones began to buy modish habits and periwigs, adorn themselves with new sword and shoulder knots, and trifle over the latest essences offered in the toyshops. ❋ Frances Hodgson Burnett (1886)

Burnamy got his charges with difficulty by the shrines in which they felt the far-reflected charm of the crucifixes of the white-hot Italian highways of their early travel, and by the toyshops where they had a mechanical, out-dated impulse to get something for the children, ending in a pang for the fact that they were children no longer. ❋ William Dean Howells (1878)

Sunday; only taverns, toyshops, and other holiday magazines, keep open doors. ❋ Robert Louis Stevenson (1872)

The little church stands on a bare brown hill, and all about it is an improvised village consisting half of restaurants and the other half of toyshops. ❋ John Hay (1870)

After exhibiting it to us, she put it back again into its tub, and it went swimming round and round, very much like those magnetic ducks which are sold in toyshops. ❋ William Henry Giles Kingston (1847)

We look at the toyshops that guide us towards pink shelves full of dolls for girls and cars and trains for girls ❋ Unknown (2010)