"Malcolm Stewart" emitted these words:

Fischer Scientific comes to mind, but you may need to be a registered
company.

This is the biggest problem I've had so far - Philip Harris is another good
supplier for the basics - we used to use them at work for all our lab
supplies, but you need to be a company/school to deal with them, and I'm not
:/ All I wanted was some glass rods in that instance!

I think you may have misunderstood somewhat, I'm not after chemicals - just
some of the sort of stuff you might find kicking around the average
secondary school physics lab....

To quote from the website below: "Fisher Scientific UK Ltd
Fisher Scientific are the only major manufacturer of laboratory chemicals
within the UK. Together with extensive catalogued ranges of equipment and
consumables, product lines exceed 50,000 items.
Functions: Manufacturer, Distributor, Exporter"
see http://www.martex.co.uk/laboratory-supplies/index.htm
also see Sanyo Gallenkamp PLC

I've dealt with both companies with no complaints.

Trying to buy explosives or explosive precursor chemicals may these days
lead you into unexplored places...

I wasn't planning on it. I'm seeking magnets, diffraction gratings and so
on, not chemicals. If I was going to blow stuff up my natural tendencies
would be to do it with physics anyway Mmmm.... railguns :P

Quite tempted by the "Benchtop Ultrasonic Disintegrator" from Sanyo
Gallenkamp though, simply because of the cool name....

Phil