Explore the vast range of titles available.

To relate the history of the Woolworths-owned Embassy records label is to simultaneously chart the history of the emergence and development of an authentic popular music in Britain. As cultural practice and commercial project, British popular music evolved, within a decade, from a peripheral and overlooked branch of the entertainment industry into one of the country's most prestigious and successful international activities. The years in which this change took place coincided exactly with the lifespan of Embassy records; ironically, the demise of one was caused by the ascendancy of the other. Although the silver and red label and its curious place in the topography of pop were familiar to anyone with even a passing interest in domestic popular music in the 1950s and 1960s, its history has been barely recorded and is frequently forgotten.

Zillow The Woolworth Mansion features a grand front drawing room spanning 35 feet with windows that stretch from the floor to the 14-foot-high ceiling. WikiCommons [Frank Winfield Woolworth] Zillow The Woolworth Mansion features a grand front drawing room spanning 35 feet with windows that stretch from the floor to the 14-foot-high ceiling. WikiCommons Frank Winfield Woolworth Despite what you may think about paying 150 grand a month, it's actually quite a deal in the New York real estate scene. Listing agent Paula Del Nunzio explained to the Observer that at almost 20,000 square feet, you get quite a lot for your money with this 35-foot-wide, seven-story home, whether furnished or unfurnished. She compared it to a 7,000-square-foot townhouse that was currently renting for $80,000 a month.

February 22, 1892: Oscar Wilde's scandalous Lady Windemere's Fan premieres in London.

Columnists and phone-in callers have wept with fond memories of Pic 'N' Mix and buying Bay City Rollers singles. The same phrases have been heard daily: \"National icon\", \"cornerstone of the high street\", \"Best of British\" etc. Like everyone else in Britain, I stuffed my Pic 'N' Mix bag with white mice and pear drops and bought cheap Buzzcocks singles there. But let's be clear. It was a private company, not a community. It was a good old-fashioned moneymaking capitalist enterprise that in the end wasn't up to the job. When there was talk of Gordon Brown propping up the business I thought it was a joke. Maybe when McDonald's and KFC can't flog us their fast food, the taxpayer should lend them a few quid? After all, those Golden Arches are pretty \"iconic\" aren't they?

Undeterred by this setback, Frank Winfield Woolworth had another go in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, extending his \"nothing over five cents\" policy to include goods costing ten cents. The idea was a raging success and Woolworths was well on the way to becoming a household name. In 1984, Woolworths started selling houses from \"property desks\" in selected stores. The idea, recently reintroduced by Ikea, was ahead of its time but management underestimated the complexities and the scheme collapsed. By 1990, they had tried just about everything - and failed. Woolies was still stuck in a \"pick'n'mix\" time warp. At least it had no competition at the bottom of the retail market. But that changed when Te sco began selling CDs and electrical goods, and got worse with the entry of Aldi into the low-cost goods market. Their buying power meant Woolies was no longer even the cheapest.

ONE national newspaper sneered when farmer's boy Frank Winfield Woolworth decided to open his first UK store in Liverpool and said it would soon fail. Frank Winfield Woolworth, who was born in Rodman, New York, in 1852, had looked at a dozen locations across the UK - including Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton and London's Hammersmith and Kensington - but Liverpool, then second city of the Empire, was his favourite. The bombshell news had been revealed in March 1982, with the ECHO beginning one report with the words of Helen Langley, the store's longest-serving assistant, who said: \"It's impossible to think of Liverpool without a Woolies.\"

FOR generations of teenagers it was the place to buy a pop single or a bag of 'pick'n'mix' sweets. Woolworths said yesterday that negotiations with [Hilco] were at a 'very early stage'. Hilco declined to comment. Woolworths has been a stalwart on Britain's high streets for almost a century. The business began in the U.S. where farmer's son Frank Winfield Woolworth founded his first store in Utica, New York, in 1879.