Charlie Hebdo: London French bookshop owner says threat of reprisals won't stop him – even if they blow the place up

Robert Zaigue says most of the people coming to buy the newspaper were English

Robert Zaigue says most of the people coming to buy the newspaper were English (Jon Stone for The Independent)

The owner of a London bookshop selling the latest issue of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has issued a defiant rebuke to would-be terrorists.

Asked if he was afraid of reprisals for selling the newspaper, Robert Zaigue, who owns The French Bookshop in South Kensington, said he was not scared by terrorism and that he would continue to go about his business as usual.

“If they want to blow the place up, they’ll blow the place up,” he explained nonchalantly. “Those people don’t scare me, we’re not going to let them scare us,” he said, minutes after his the last copy of the newspaper sold out on Friday morning.

Hundreds of people queued around the block to get a copy of the magazine's new issue from The French Bookshop in London’s French quarter, with some people in the crowd setting their alarms for 5.45am to get to the front of the queue.

The bookshop, on Bute Street (Jon Stone for The Independent)

Hopeful customers were allowed into the shop “five or six” at a time and, with hundreds braving the pavement outside in a queue stretching down Bute Street, winding down Harrington Road, and curling up through the whole length of nearby Glendower Place.

Despite London being home to 400,000 French people, Mr Zaigue said the bulk of the buyers at his shop this morning had actually been English.

The huge crowd filed through the doors of the South Kensington shop without incident. A police office who attended the scene told the Independent that the store’s proprietor had request a police presence but that the main concern was people spilling onto the road outside.

“There’s been no trouble at all, we’re more worried about someone getting run over,” the officer said.

The bookshop owner appeared fairly ambivalent about the newspaper itself, however.

Asked his views on the issue’s cover, which features an image of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, Mr Zaigue said he had none, and that he was not interested in politics.

The proprietor said he had not bought a copy of the magazine himself. “Customer first,” he explained.

As some customers left empty handed, Mr Zaigue laughed off questions about when more issues of the magazine would become available, noting that Charlie Hebdo’s distributors were notoriously unreliable.

The current issue of Charlie Hebdo is the first since the massacre at the newspaper’s offices which killed 12 and sparked a France-wide manhunt. It went on sale in France earlier this week and has now been released in the UK with limited distribution.