WH Smith plc, trading as WHSmith, is a British travel retailer, with headquarters in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery, as well as the UK online retailer Cult Pens. The company was formed by Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna in 1792 as a news vendor in London. It remained under the ownership of the Smith family for many years and saw large-scale expansion during the 1970s as the company began to diversify into other markets. Following a rejected private equity takeover in 2004, the company began to focus on its core retail business. In the 1960s, it was responsible for the creation of the ISBN book identifier. WHSmith sold its UK high-street retail operation to Modella Capital in 2025, in order to focus on its travel-related outlets; the new owner rebranded the shops as TGJones. WHSmith is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Wikipedia