Following the positive reception of 84 Charing Cross Road, Deutsch Publications in London invited Helene Hanff to promote the book. After twenty years of invitations from the staff of Marks and Company Bookstore and their families, Hanff was finally able to take her trip. Her primary contact and friend Frank Doel had tragically died of a heart attack three years earlier but his widow Nora and her daughter Sheila maintained correspondence with Hanff, inviting her to stay with them. Hanff decided on a quaint hotel in the heart of London, close to Charing Cross Road, and immediately won over the hotel staff and became an instant friend to all the people she met in London. In her five week stay in the city, in addition to seeing Buckingham Palace, The Tower, and Windsor Castle, Hanff became known as the duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Writing down all her experiences in a journal, one can only feel empathy for Hanff who would have loved to make her trip to London while Doel was still alive and Marks and Company still open for business. She reveled in every moment of her vacation and was sad to return to New York, preferring her time in her newly adopted city.