WHSmith

WH Smith plc, trading as WHSmith (also written WH Smith and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son), is a British travel retailer, with headquarters in London, England, which operates a chain of railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.

The company was formed by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in 1792 as a news vendor in London. It remained under the ownership of the Smith family for many years and saw large-scale expansion during the 1970s as the company began to diversify into other markets. Following a rejected private equity takeover in 2004, the company began to focus on its core retail business. In the 1960s, the company facilitated the creation of the SBN book identifier, which later became the internationally-used ISBN.

WHSmith sold its UK high-street retail operation to Modella Capital in 2025, in order to focus on its travel-related outlets; the new owner rebranded the shops as TGJones.

WHSmith is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established the business as a news vendor in Little Grosvenor Street, London. After their deaths, the business — valued in 1812 at £1,280 (equivalent to £107,686 in 2023) — was taken over by their youngest son William Henry Smith, and in 1846 the firm became W. H. Smith & Son when his only son, also named William Henry, became a partner. The firm took advantage of the railway boom by opening news-stands on railway stations, beginning with Euston in 1848. In 1850, the firm opened depots in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. It also ran a circulating library service, from 1860 to 1961, and a publishing business based at the Steam Press, Cirencester. The younger W. H. Smith used the success of the firm as a springboard into politics, becoming a Member of Parliament (MP) in 1868 and serving as a minister in several Conservative governments.

After the death of W. H. Smith the younger in 1891, his widow was created Viscountess Hambleden in her own right; their son inherited the business from his father and the viscountcy from his mother. After the death of the second Viscount in 1928, the business was reconstituted as a limited company, in which his son, the third Viscount, owned all the ordinary shares. On the death of the third Viscount in 1948, the death duties were so large that a public holding company had to be formed and shares sold to WH Smith staff and the public. A younger brother of the third Viscount remained chairman until 1972, but the Smith family's control slipped away, and the last family member left the board in 1996.

In the 1960s, as other retailers shifted to digital stock management, WHSmith required a new system to catalogue books. Following negotiations with The Publishers Association, the company hired Irish Statistician Gordon Foster as a consultant, who in 1966 created a nine-digit code for uniquely referencing books called Standard Book Numbering or SBN. By 1967 it was in public use, and was later adopted as the International Organisation for Standardisation ISO 2108 in 1970. This was operational until 1974, when it was finally adapted to become the ISBN.

From the 1970s, WHSmith began to expand into other retail sectors. Their travel agency WH Smith Travel operated from 1973 to 1991. The Do It All chain of DIY shops originated with an acquisition in 1979, becoming a joint venture with Boots in 1990; Boots acquired WHSmith's share in June 1996. The bookshop chain Waterstone's, founded by former WHSmith executive Tim Waterstone in 1982, was bought in 1989 and sold in 1998.