Bertrams

Article summary

Bertram Trading Limited, commonly referred to as Bertrams, was the second largest United Kingdom based wholesaler of books, owned since 2018 by Aurelius Investments. It had 200,000 titles available for same-day despatch and had access to over 13 million books in print. The group included Bertram Books, Bertram Publisher Services and Bertram Library Services. The company was founded in 1971 by Elsie Bertram and her son Kip, based on a business which Elsie had been running since 1965 in a chicken shed in the garden of her Norwich home. It had and independent booksellers as its core customers. Bertrams was bought by Woolworths Group in 2007. The acquisition was reviewed by the Competition Commission. The retail business of Woolworths Group and its distribution firm Entertainment UK entered administration in November 2008, although Bertrams did not as it operated as a separate division within the group. Woolworths Group entered into administration itself in January 2009. Bertrams entered administration on 20 March 2009 and sold on the same day by Ernst & Young in a "pre-pack" deal to Smiths News (now Connect Group) for £8,611,622. It was sold by Connect Group in 2018 and entered administration again on 19 June 2020. As of June 2020, many of the suppliers remain unpaid.…

Key claims

1. date of foundation: 1971 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
2. The record states that the date of foundation is "1971". What evidence would count against this claim?
3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1359474153