What Makes a Great Bookshop?

My favourites in London

It is a drizzly afternoon in London.

You are mildly hungover and bad-tempered. One of your socks is slipping down inside your boots — which are wet, because you just stepped in a puddle.

Cursing, you clean your spectacles on your jumper. The cheap wool only smudges the rainwater around the glass.

Blearily, you look up, and find that you have stumbled upon a row of antique bookshops. They are old-fashioned, with hand-painted signs and doorbells. They might have stayed that way for fifty, one-hundred, two-hundred years.

The books in the windows are made of cloth, or leather, or board. Their bindings are rich ochres, dusty greens, shining gold, or warm russet. After the plastic colours of the high street, these windows are transportive. They put you in mind of Donna Tartt, of Evelyn Waugh: of staying up late, studying by candlelight.

As the sky opens up, you turn into the first shop on your left, triggering the door bell.

You are met with a familiar smell… warm, dry, nutty, with hints of vanilla.

Leaving the stresses of the city outside, you wipe your shoes on the doormat, and begin the hunt.

Sadly, I did not buy this beautiful illustrated edition of Ann Radcliffe’s ‘Mysteries of Udolpho’.

So, what makes a good bookshop?

An excellent question. There is no one-size fits all. There are specialist bookshops, and generalist bookshops, and bookshops which are totally unpredictable and in which you might find anything or nothing at all.

Do not be fooled by ‘tourist trap’ bookshops (for instance, The Notting Hill Bookshop), and be wary of gimmicky bookshops like Saucy Books (which specialises in Romantasy and YA). Chain bookshops, like Waterstones and Daunt Books, are usually reliable and diverse, if a little predictable. They usually have excellent cafes.

But, really, a good bookshop is not defined by how many books it has, but instead by how much character it has. This is particularly true of secondhand bookshops.

Look for things like: how quickly the stock turns over, how much thought has gone into what is there, how knowledgeable (and quirky) the staff are, and how often you leave with something you didn’t expect to find.

Most great bookshops fall somewhere on this spectrum. Here are a few of my favourites in London…

1. Excellent curation: Treadwell’s

I first stumbled into Treadwell’s Books, off Tottenham Court Road, by accident.

It was October, and the Halloween decorations were up. As a keen fan of Gothic literature, I was struck by their window display: a headless mannequin, wearing a ghostly white sheet, holding a candlestick.

Highlighted books included A History of Witchcraft, Occult, and Eternal Goth.

Treadwell’s is a bookshop for students of the occult, magic, folklore, and mysticism. The decor is dark and moody. It stocks esoteric literature and hosts events like Tarot readings, a witch choir, and lectures (please invite me, Treadwell’s!).

Not everyone will want to read about ghosts or folklore; but the type of reader who is interested in one of those things is likely to be curious about the other.

Not all great bookshops have to have every book. Sometimes it’s more about having the right things for the right audience.

2. High turnover and low prices: Judd Books and Skoob Books

Judd Books in Marchmont street is a secondhand bookstore that sells ‘remaindered’ books – usually on the topic of arts and social sciences.

When a book is ‘remaindered’, that means that the publisher didn’t sell enough copies, and they need to get rid of them (to free up warehouse space) for a vastly reduced price. So, these are bargains.

Judd Books in Marchmont street.

Nearby, you have ‘Skoob’ (which is ‘books’ backwards), which also retails secondhand academic books. This one is long-established (dating back to 1979), and Time Out have called this ‘the best bookshop in London’. It is sprawling, and a bit chaotic, and great for sniffing out special volumes.

Many of the bookshops in this particular area have high turnover because of their proximity to several universities, including SOAS and UCL.

Humanities students, in particular, will find these two bookshops useful because it stocks academic books on topics from Arts, to Architecture, History, Philosophy, Film, Music, Psychology, and Economics…

Skoob Books in Bloomsbury’s Brunswick centre.

3. A sense of community: Gay’s The Word

This is the oldest LGBTQ+ bookshop in the whole of the UK, and it is deeply embedded in queer history.

Gay’s The Word was set up by a group of gay socialists in the 1970s. It is, and always has been, a safe, thriving community space. It’s a living testament to the strength of the queer liberation movement of the past fifty years.

The staff here are all very engaged in the literary scene. They are mostly reviewers, writers, and students of literature themselves. I was there recently, and saw one of the staff chatting exuberantly to a very shy customer, gesticulating towards the their contemporary sapphic fiction section. They were very passionate! It was lovely to see.

This bookshop is also another stellar example of curation. It offers a wonderful selection of both classic and contemporary. They also sell things other than books: postcards, art, and literature-themed badges at the till (a nod to the badges worn by queer activists in the 1970s).

Their stock ranges from queer classics (think, Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes) to contemporary philosophy, to history, to graphic novels, poetry, and YA. Last time I was there, they had a whole shelf dedicated to the gay hockey romance, Heated Rivalry.

Gay’s the Word on Marchmont street.

4. Hidden finds: Archive Bookstore, Comic Exchange, and World’s End Bookshop

A great test for great bookshops: how often do you pick up something you didn’t know you wanted?

My three favourites here are not for beginner book hunters. They are dense, and cluttered, and a bit musty.

The iconic Notting Hill Comic Book Exchange

You don’t go to these shops looking for something specific; however, if you are someone who really likes books (which you probably are), you would be hard pressed to leave without a volume that interests you.

The first is Archive Bookstore, on Bell Street, which offers an utterly chaotic selection of books on music, and sheet music: opera, vocal, instrumental. They also have a range of books on psychology and neurology, as well as random antiques and ephemera.

The second is the Notting Hill Comic Exchange, which is where I bought my first comic when I was eleven years old. Sadly, I cannot remember what it was (I think it might have been a vintage X-Men?). These guys sell volumes in plastic bags (like the old days). It’s like walking into a time machine.

The third is the World’s End Bookshop on the King’s Road. This is a kind of relic from the Swinging Sixties. It specialises in sexy, artsy books: photography, art, design, fashion, and rare copies of twentieth century British classics. It’s got this iconic red awning that has been a feature of the local area for about 40 years. They have a policy of what the owner calls ‘an unpredictable cavalcade’. You might find anything here.

The World’s End Bookshop on the King’s Road

So: back to our opening anecdote.

It’s still Sunday, and you’re still hungover. You have been browsing through the bookshop, while waiting for the rain outside to abate.

The owner — who is having drinks with his friends at the back of the shop — offers you a glass of red wine. You decline it, but you get talking nonetheless. He reveals to you that he has a copy of that rare book you’ve been wanting to buy for many years.

You leave the shop, an hour later, with that book. Your sock is still slipping down your heel, and your boots are still wet, but your mood has shifted. You can feel the weight of the leather-bound volume thumping against your thigh, as you splash back down the road.

You cannot wait to get home, make a cup of tea, curl up, on your sofa, and read it.

When you’ve finished, you’ll slot it into the missing space on your bookshelf.

That is what a good bookshop does… it’s all about serendipity. You might leave with something you never intended to find.

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