Remember Woolworths? Remember Debenhams? Remember Comet, BHS, MFI?

In twenty years, Britain has lost more big retailers than ever before. Nothing has replaced them. A fifth of our shops stand empty. Shops employ more people than any other industry, and they’re failing. Experts call it the retail apocalypse – and it’s not over yet.

Is it just the internet? Or is something else killing our high streets?

Ian M. Palmer has worked in retail since the 1980s. In Closed for Good? he looks at some of our greatest retail businesses, from the eccentrics and entrepreneurs who built them to the forces which are bringing them down.

What happens to a nation of shopkeepers when the shops close?