Every great city has a particular place that book-lovers know. In Istanbul it’s Sahaflar Carsisi, the bookseller’s souk, where cats doze on top of the books or dodge the feet of passers-by; in Paris it’s the left bank of the Seine, where the bouquinistes have their barrows; and in London, it’s the area around the British Museum and Charing Cross Road.
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Le Bouquiniste in Paris, France © Sandy0061
London’s seductive little bookshops will wreak havoc with your travel schedule, distracting you for hours from the city’s hustle and bustle. Read on to learn more as bookworm Andrea Kirkby shares her favourite hidden-away bookshops.
There are plenty of secondhand bookshops on Charing Cross Road, as well as a few new ones, though increases in rents have forced out some of the old shops. Quinto has moved from the corner site it occupied for decades to further up the road, but it’s still got a huge stock ranging from antiquarian archaeology to pulp fiction (the genre, not the film). The stock changes regularly – management see that as a priority – and the basement remains a wonderful lucky dip where you’re likely to find something cheap and amusing, if not particularly collectable.
Just along the road is the extremely addictive Henry Pordes Books, a mix of secondhand and remaindered books focusing on art, architecture, and design, though with other subjects well covered too. It always has a marvelously eclectic mix; a book on Fabergé eggs will be sitting next to a work on West African mud architecture, for instance. But this bookshop is dangerous in another way too, because you really don’t want to take a credit card in there. The art books are just way too tempting.
I remember Skoob Books (it’s a palindrome – get it?) when it was in Sicilian Arcade, but it’s now moved to Marchmont Street, in the basement of the Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury. It’s a massive place which claims to stock no fewer than 58,000 titles in a massive warehouse in Oxfordshire with even more books in it. Plus, it’s open till 8 in the evening on weekdays.
So far, these are all general bookshops, but there are more specialised ones too. The Atlantis Bookshop in Museum Street sells books about the occult, astrology, magic, Qabalah, and witchcraft, both new and secondhand. I’ve never felt completely comfortable in there for some reason. It may be the idea of what would happen if all that magic broke out of the books into the real world (a theme Terry Pratchett has taken up a couple of times in his Discworld novels). Harry Potter fans will love it.
Arthur Probsthain, opposite the British Museum on Great Russell Street, specialises in all things Oriental. Whatever your interest – literature, art, economics or history – if it’s to do with the Far or Middle East, or Africa, Probsthain will have it or know where it can be got. The shop also sells postcards and art and has a little tea room downstairs too. It’s a wonderful little sanctuary.
Then there are other specialist new bookshops around the same area, from Gay’s the Word to Gosh! (the latter sells graphic novels, known to the uninitiated as comics) and from the Socialist Bookshop to the Swedenborg Society Bookshop. Most of the shops I’ve mentioned here have stocks of a small leaflet detailing all the bookshops in the area, so it’s easy to navigate around London’s surprisingly unknown book district.
Finally, if you’re interested in music and the theatre, take a trip south towards Trafalgar Square, where you’ll find the bookshops of Cecil Court, a tiny pedestrian alley running between St Martin’s Lane and Charing Cross Road. There are another dozen or so interesting bookshops here, with fine old shopfronts taking you back to the nineteenth century and subjects including motors, esoteric spirituality, music, ballet, and maps.
And if books aren’t enough to satisfy your every whim, you can even buy an antique snuffbox, tea caddy or top hat from the Mark Sullivan antique shop in the same little enclave.
Oh, and wondering where should a booklover visiting London stay? The Montague on the Gardens is a luxury boutique hotel in Bloomsbury, a short stroll from London’s book district and situated next to the British Museum.