British retail sales rose the most in over a decade in the second quarter despite a drop in spending in June, official data showed on Thursday, giving the Bank of England some reassurance shoppers have largely shaken off a sluggish start to 2018.
Retail sales volumes in June alone were down 0.5 percent from May - at the low end of economists' forecasts in a Reuters poll - as the World Cup kept some shoppers out of stores after extremely rapid growth during the previous two months.
Sales for the second quarter as a whole were 2.1 percent higher than the first three months of the year, the biggest
calendar-quarter increase since the first quarter of 2004.
