It is with great sadness and in acknowledgement of an extraordinary life lived, that we share the news of the passing of Leo Berkelouw, doyen of the Australian antiquarian book world and patriarch of the Berkelouw book dynasty.

Born in London in August 1938 to Dutch parents, Leo was a fifth-generation bookdealer. His father and grandfather, both of Jewish heritage, worked in the book business in Rotterdam, and when the city was bombed in 1940, their premises, along with its priceless collections were lost. When his father, Isidoor, was arrested by German forces and imprisoned, he wrote to his protestant wife, Francina, to tell her he was allowed one final visitor before he was to be transported to a death camp. Francina, a strong and resourceful woman, took Leo in his pram and beneath the mattress she hid a set of women’s clothes. When she was allowed some minutes alone to say goodbye, she dressed her husband as a woman and they walked out of the prison together, pushing Leo in his pram. His father would spend the rest of the war in hiding.

Leo’s paternal grandparents and most of his aunts, uncles and cousins did not survive the war, and these terrible experiences had a profound impact on Leo and his family. Facing a vastly changed Europe, his parents decided to make a new life for the family in Australia. Leo was just nine years old when he and his sister Francis, brother Henry and parents arrived in Sydney aboard a Lockheed Constellation, on one of the first ever commercial airline flights. His family made front page news.

Leo’s father began collecting old and rare books and eventually he had enough to re-establish the family business, opening Berkelouw Books in King Street in Sydney in 1951. After a brief stint studying law at the University of Sydney, Leo went into the family book business alongside his brother, Henry. At the feet of his father, Leo worked long hours, learned the antiquarian book trade and became a world expert in early Australiana and the Pacific Voyagers.

In 1970, Leo married Noelene Van de Velde (‘Nokes’) and they had three boys, Paul, Robert and David. Eventually, Leo took over the family business and in the 1970’s, when sales around the world were moving to mail-order, he bought a farm with a run-down, historic homestead, ‘Bendooley’, in the New South Wales Southern Highlands. There he ran his rare book business by mail order. In a paddock he built a barn that became the famous ‘Berkelouw Book Barn’, to house the overflow from the book collections he would buy, many of which only had a few rare or precious items that interested him, but were sold within entire ‘lots’, often from deceased estates. It became an institution for booklovers.

With a twinkle in his eye, Leo would often admit he didn’t know one end of a cow from another when he bought ‘Bendooley’, but with the help of his country-born wife and a manager, the farm expanded, the boys grew up and the book business flourished. He and Nokes raised a new generation of bookdealers – each of their sons followed their father into books. Between them, the Berkelouw brothers now own approximately thirty bookshops including Berkelouw Books, Book Face and Harry Hartog stores.

At heart, Leo was a businessman: he observed trends and was happy to move with the times. In the 1990s, on Oxford Street in Paddington, he opened the first book shop in Australia that also offered a coffee shop. With the release of the kindle, he and his son Paul pivoted once again into hospitality, beginning with a revamp of the Berkelouw Book Barn in Berrima. Still offering a new and second-hand bookstore, what was once a humble barn in the middle of a paddock now hosts luxury weddings and events in world class facilities at a reimagined ‘Bendooley Estate’. It also offers accommodation, restaurants, a vineyard and cellar door.

Book dealing gave Leo many adventures and took him to the most strange and wonderful places: from the estate of a famed American billionaire, to a forgotten catholic mission library in San Francisco; from a shanty in the Australian outback with an unbelievable collection stored underground, to a dilapidated mansion near Birmingham where a priceless collection had been abandoned and the roof had fallen in. These adventures were what he lived for; the thrill of a potential find, the first glimpse of a rare tome. Whilst he was charming man and a wonderful raconteur in company, he loved nothing more than to shut himself away from people and bury himself in rare and interesting books.

An erudite and gentle man with a huge capacity for both work and fun, Leo will be greatly missed by his family. His passing, at age 84, leaves the book world far poorer, as his vast and unteachable knowledge of antiquarian books goes with him.