Ike Ong, co-founder and director of Skoob Books for many years, has died, aged 74.

He was a child of empire, born in Malaya of Chinese extraction and sent to school in England. His father served in the RAF in Malaya and later wrote maths books used in Malaysian schools.  After studying accounting, Ike worked for Joseph Poole & Co, a secondhand bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road. When that closed, he co-founded Skoob Books, started in a Covent Garden lock up which previously housed market barrows. After a falling out between the partners (stories vary), he ran Skoob Books for the next 25 years.

Keeping that going, selling general and academic secondhand books when commercial rents usually increase by a third or a half at each review, was no mean feat. He could be erratic, but also combined gravitas with great energy and creativity. In the earlier part of his life, this came with an optimism and bravura characteristic of some of those who grew up in the sixties.

The bookshop moved to more decorative premises in Sicilian Avenue (between Bloomsbury Square and Holborn tube) where it remained for the next 20 years. He opened a second shop near the British Museum and took a further unit in Sicilian Avenue. Then three more abroad, in Singapore, Brisbane and Kuala Lumpur. The latter, taken on by Thor Kah Hoong, lasted for some decades.

Ike’s next adventure was publishing, producing a guide to secondhand bookshops in the UK, and then lists of literature, esoterica, and literature written in English, in and about SE Asia. He maintained strong links there, and it is perhaps these, of the books he produced, which had most lasting impact.

At the millennium, Ike escaped increasing rent difficulties in Sicilian Avenue, moving the shop to The Brunswick Centre, further north in Bloomsbury. A modern building and much more space. At the same time his burgeoning interest in film led to the production of small films on video, particularly around historical reenactment, and saw him studying and then teaching filmmaking. This in a room below the shop floor, replete with cinema seats removed from a local cinema at refurbishment.

In 2005 The Brunswick Centre was itself to be refurbished and everything had to be moved. Ike’s view of life after years of keeping the business afloat, had become bleaker. His bookselling had run its course.

After selling Skoob Books, he taught film in Singapore briefly, and then decamped to Northern Thailand where he built a house, and started pig farming. No one knows what happened out there, but he reappeared unexpectedly at the reopened bookshop. After a diagnosis of dementia, and time spent in care, he died in London. He was twice married and leaves 4 daughters.

Ie Keat Ong, better known as Ike, 1952-2026