W. H. Smith

WH Smith plc, trading as WHSmith (also written WH Smith and formerly as W. H. Smith & Son), is a British company which operates a chain of shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery. Its outlets are in travel hubs such as railway stations, airports, ports, hospitals and motorway service stations. 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.