Paul Austick

Those two aspects of his life, which he inherited from his father, set the tone for his own life, with his faith in particular having a great influence on him and how he related to others.

He was born in Meanwood, Leeds, the younger son of Hilda and Bertie Lister Austick. His father was a partner in Massey's Bookshop in the Lower Headrow and a pastor of Dewsbury Road Congregational Church.

When Massey's went into liquidation in 1928, his parents started their own business. The young Paul played behind the counter while his mother looked after the shop, and his father travelled supplying and selling to other shops and public libraries. His father, who was by then a Methodist local preacher and Sunday School teacher, died in 1938 but his mother continued running the business with help from her two sons.

Paul Austick won a scholarship to Leeds Modern School in 1935 and at the outbreak of the war was evacuated with the school to Ilkley. Nearly every weekend he cycled home to help his mother in the shop, then in Cookridge Street, Leeds, while still finding time to be a patrol leader in the Scouts.

When the school returned to Leeds, he worked in the school office to help pay for him to stay on to take his Higher School Certificate.

When he left he was apprenticed to an accountant.

He was called up in 1944 and sent to India with the West Yorkshire Regiment. He was later posted to the 4th Battalion 10th Ghurkha Rifles, eventually becoming a lieutenant/acting captain before being demobbed in 1947. He was always immensely proud of his Ghurkha connections.

The lure of bookselling saw him leave accountancy training to join his mother and brother in the business, in 1950, when the University Bookshop in Woodhouse Lane, opened.

Steady expansion of Austicks Bookshops followed, often taking over businesses when people retired and merging their niche markets. When the company closed in 1998 there were nine shops in Leeds and Harrogate. There were also other shops over the years in Scarborough, Huddersfield Technical College, and streets in Leeds that no longer exist. They also had a number of forays into publishing.

He was a Charter Member of the Booksellers' Association, and was on its education committee for the Booksellers Diploma. He also supported the setting up of the Puffin Children's Book Club, later the Puffin School Book Club, that has encouraged thousands of children to read.

Mr Austick and his older brother, David, were instrumental in setting up the Yorkshire Post Literary Luncheons in 1961, with the then Editor, Kenneth Young – a cultural institution still running today.

Mr Austick was in the Chamber of Trade in Leeds and the North East in the 1960s and 1970s, encouraging shopkeepers concerned about the change to decimalisation, and campaigning against Sunday Trading and out of town supermarkets.

Following the death of his brother David, in 1997, his own ill health eventually forced him to retire and close the businesses, by which time the name of Austicks had become synonymous with bookselling around the world.

The Methodist Church played a large part in his life, first at Oxford Place, then Woodhouse Moor. He was a Sunday School teacher, and after the war was a Scout leader as well as Sunday School teacher and youth leader.

Latterly he was chapel steward at Timble, near Otley, where the family lived from 1976.

For nearly 40 year,s he was chairman of the Leeds Committee for Unicef UK, retiring in 1996, and was on the Unicef UK board for several years. His experiences of life in India and his love of children made him passionate about helping those unable to help themselves.

He is survived by his wife Frances, son Peter, daughters Jane and Sarah and two grandsons. His funeral will be held on Monday at Otley

Methodist Church, at 11.15am.