Turn your home into a business - Telegraph

Turn your home into a business - Telegraph

It happens, you know, even these days. People change their lives, move on and start again. Ros and Bill DeLaHey moved from London to an old manse on the Scottish Borders a few years ago, and in 2008 they bought an old auction house a mile away. Here they opened a bookshop called The Main Street Trading Company, which runs book clubs, hosts author events and is so successful that it wins awards. Gooey cakes, good coffee, children and teen books? It is all here.

This couldn’t be more counter-intuitive, happening in the grip of recession and just as book publishing goes all digital. “We didn’t even open in a town, but in a village called St Boswells,” says Ros. She previously worked as children’s marketing director at Bloomsbury, where she was heavily involved in promoting the Harry Potter books.

Bill, a photographer, retrained as a chef. He now keeps the apron on and rustles up bistro lunches and sticky buns at the bookshop café. “Everything is made from scratch, and a lady in the village also brings in delicious things,” says Ros.