W H Smith

W H Smith was a British retailer where Susan Foreman looked for ballpoint pens. Though the shop did indeed sell them, she wasn't allowed to use them at Coal Hill School, where fountain pens were required. (PROSE: Time and Relative)

Behind the scenes
In real life, W H Smith is a major British bookseller which has long sold Doctor Who books, magazines and videos. Their sales are so significant that they have been able to affect distribution of Doctor Who merchandise in a couple of ways.

They have occasionally been able to issue "retailer exclusives", or particular packages available only at their stores. They sold at least three limited edition box sets of Doctor Who episodes for BBC Video — The Davros Collection in 2001, The Time Lord Collection in 2002, and The Dalek Collection in 2005.

They also had enough clout with BBC Books to influence book jacket design. In 1994 W H Smith refused to stock the novel Goth Opera based on its planned cover illustration, which portrayed Nyssa as a vampire with a great deal of blood on her clothes. Since W H Smith were the UK's largest book retailer, Virgin Books chose to address their concerns and edit most of the blood out of the cover image before publication.