I spent a day- dawned with both Google Maps and a brewing sense of Imposter Syndrome- discovering the ‘best’ bookshops in London. The ones that made me forget about my looming stack of un-read books at home have made this list; the ones that charge double retail for a still-in-print second hand book, have not.
I began my journey in the largest bookshop in Europe, Waterstones in Piccadilly Circus. This is an ideal spot for anyone who is looking for something particularly niche, as there are many choices. But for a bookshop with more ‘browsing energy’, I’d head to Hatchards down the road.
I think this is my favourite bookshop of them all. Situated in a beautiful historical building, this is somewhere between Ollivander’s shop from Harry Potter and the Notting Hill book shop. Though the shop itself is smaller than the Piccadilly Circus Waterstones, its selection of modern poetry anthologies was notably larger – and that sold me.
As my tried and true, Foyles on Charing Cross Road deserves a mention. I can always get lost in their various selections of new releases. I don’t know if it’s their curation of texts or just the aesthetically-pleasing central staircase, but this Foyles really romanticises the entire book-shopping experience.
The next on my list is every university student’s best friend. Skoob is second-hand bookshop dawned ceiling to floor in academic books. It is the one for finding texts on your reading list at budget-friendly prices, or for happening upon further reading for your favourite modules.
Just up the road, there are two other bookshops very much worth a visit. Gay’s the Word is an exceptionally warm and welcoming independent boasting a selection of fiction and non-fiction, all from LGBTQ+ authors. And a few shops along, you will find Judd Book’s – one of the best second-hand bookshops, second only to Skoob, with an eclectic mix of texts ranging from literature to academia all for very reasonable prices.
Image taken by Allegra Campbell Boreham
The final stop (nearly) on this whistle-stop tour around the capital’s bookshops is Word on the Water. A gem of a bookshop in the form of a canal boat. After a day of shelf-surfing – and shops that boasted a far larger size – I was surprised to find lots of cherry-picked titles I hadn’t seen before. Lastly, if you are making the journey, there is also the not-for-profit radical bookshop Housmans down the road that is home to a range of fresh voices.
Image taken by Allegra Campbell Boreham
A good bookshop makes you fall in love with a book before you read it. And shopping experiences like that make reading for pleasure addictive- and a lot harder to drop once the university workload starts up again in the new term.
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