Walking around the labyrinthine 25,000 sq ft Blackwell’s bookshop in the heart of Oxford, David Prescott has to restrain himself from rearranging a display. Once a shop manager, always a shop manager.

Mr Prescott’s first job after university was in “goods in” — unpacking books and cataloguing — at the chain of specialist booksellers. Having worked his way up, he is now chief executive of Blackwell’s, with more on his plate than fanning novels into a beautiful shape: chiefly, keeping the company afloat in an industry battered by the digital juggernaut Amazon.

In contrast to the organised chaos of the various book departments, the 43-year-old’s office is sterile. The mock pine desk bears just a few papers and a laptop. The only decoration on the walls is a framed copy of the company’s shared values, which are strikingly simple and free of jargon, or “not American” as Mr Prescott puts it. One such value is “putting customers first”, which in turn demands that “I will always give every customer my undivided attention”.