Added HBH 09012017: From wikipedia "WHSmith plc (also known as WHS or colloquially as Smith's, and formerly W. H. Smith & Son) is a British retailer which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers and entertainment products. Its headquarters are in Swindon, Wiltshire. Smith's is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. It was the first chain store company in the world, and was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book catalogue system."

Obviously a match made in heaven during the 80's with regards to selling home computer software. All systems, but in particular spectrum and C64.

They must have been one of the primal outlets for computer games/machines from all well known publishers. And after taking over John Menzies in 1988 (which was UK's vital distributor of EVERTHHING from digital, tapes, records, etc.) they would be able to make a lot of money. The problem is that Wikipedia has documented the 1980's computer games fairly well, but the European market is hardly mentioned - or given any credit. When it in fact was "holding the torch" when it came to video game artistry.

News from Home Computing Weekly No.51 (Feb 28-5 Mar, 1984) "We'll spend more in 1984.Home computers and software gave W.H. Smiths a profit boost of- and the boom goes on. Merchandise controller Stewart Bennie forcast: "This year is going to be even better than 1983." His company had just reported that sales of home computers and software had soared by 55.5 per cent, from 15m to 27m, in the10 months ended December 3. Smiths had 30 computer shops-within-shops and plans to open another 16-17 this year. Mr. Binnie put it's success to two main factors: loner experience and starting with a narrower product range, side of the business had been less hazardous for Smiths. Even so, many customers had been disappointing as their choice of computer was not available - particularly the Electron (BBC), which suffered from Acorns manufacturing problems, and the spectrum. The Bright Spot have been the Commodore 64 which was in good supply. Mr. Binnie said: "It's our experience that the demand is still very strong, as you can might imagine." He said the 1983 pattern would be strong until afther the 'O' and 'A' level results in June and July. Computer magazines had shared the success, he said, and added, "we seem to have more and more titles and we sell more of them every month". Mr. Binnie wawarned newcommers and software was now a sophisticated business. It's not something you can wander into.".