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The great London bookstore crawl
From Foyle’s to Foster Books and Libreria, here’s a list of bookstores that you must visit the next time you’re in the city
Tall shelves jam-packed with books of all shapes and sizes; creaking wooden floors, rickety ladders; the smell of old books, redolent with notes of vanilla and almond; the inobtrusive tones and happy expressions of people enjoying a leisurely browse.
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was speaking for all book lovers when he wrote: “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
It may be easier to download books on Kindle or order them online, but nothing beats browsing through bookcases and shelves, with no particular book in mind. Whether you prefer classics, modern tomes, contemporary literature, or comics, the allure of good books – and bookshops – endures.
London is the ultimate tourist trap – there are so many things to do, and so little time. However, there’s one thing I just had to do in the British capital after exploring its countless monuments, museums, gardens, cafes, and stores – trundle in and out of the city's many bookshops, little oases of peace and calm that allowed me to travel into new worlds.
Just as I set out on a London bookstore crawl came the heartening news that the number of bookshops in the city has grown. This is at a time when offline book retailers are closing around the world. According to the Booksellers Association, the count of independent bookstores was up from 1,027 in 2021 to 1,072 at the end of 2022. That’s considerably higher than 867 in 2016.
Here’s where I wandered on my literary days out. Do put these stores on your list if you are in the city this summer and intend to embark on your own bookshop crawl:
Daunt Books: A chain of bookshops founded in 1990 by James Daunt, Daunt Books originally specialised in travel books. It now has many branches (Holland Park, Cheapside, Hampstead, and Belsize Park) but the first store, spread over two floors, in Marylebone High Street remains the most popular – and the most photographed. The Edwardian structure, with long oak galleries, beautiful skylights, and William Morris prints, brings to mind 'olde worlde' libraries and draws book lovers for the aesthetics as well as the books. All the volumes are arranged according to the country they come from – armchair travel of another sort. The woman at the till tells me about the popular Daunt Books’ yearly subscription. Those who sign up get new titles tailored to their choice. The store also holds its own literature festival in March.
Hatchards: Supposedly London’s oldest bookshop, Hatchards has held court at Piccadilly, one of the most famous streets in the world, since 1797. Established by John Hatchard, publisher and anti-slavery campaigner, it is now a British institution. At the lovely five-storeyed shop next to Fortnum and Mason and opposite the Royal Academy, rows upon rows of books invite the dedicated reader as well as the gift seeker. Collectors’ editions, a subscription service, the Hatchards Library (which publishes select limited editions with cloth binding and a stylish dust jacket), and three Royal Warrants mean this bookstore is on everyone’s to-do list. If you can’t make it to Piccadilly, stop off at St Pancras station to peruse the smaller store that was opened in 2014.
Foyles: It’s said that “if Kafka had been a bookseller, Foyles would have been the result”. The bookstore was born in 1903 when brothers William and Gilbert Foyle, after failing their civil service exams, started selling off unwanted textbooks. Since then, the bookseller has grown to a network of seven shops across the UK, with its flagship store at Charing Cross in London. The shop’s eccentric business practices – customers had to queue up three times: to collect an invoice, pay, and then collect the book – surprisingly made it a popular tourist destination. In 1930, William’s daughter, Christina, started literary luncheons that continue at the Charing Cross premises. The bookshop is also known for famously telegramming Hitler, asking to buy the books he was burning in the 1930s (he refused). It later found a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the bookshop with the most titles in stock and the longest lines of shelving (30 miles). Waterstones took over Foyles for an undisclosed fee in September 2018, but decided to retain the brand.
John Sandoe Books: This indie store, which is Dickensian in appearance, calls itself “a Smaug’s hoard of books”. In 1957, John Sandoe started a tiny shop in Chelsea with Félicité Gwynne, sister of the cookery writer Elizabeth David. They began with three planks laid on bricks to house “all the books one could ever hope to find in one place”. More books and more shelves followed, and the three-storeyed bookstore went on to occupy the adjacent two shops as well. The booklist leans towards humanities, offering fiction, history, biography, poetry, art, architecture, decorative arts, music, theatre, cinema, photography, fashion, natural history, gardening, travel, cookery, science, reference, and children’s books. There are books everywhere – on the tables, chairs, stairs, and the window seats that invite one to linger. Interestingly, the store houses about 30,000 books, of which almost all are single copies.
Alice Through The Looking Glass: There’s no need to look for a rabbit hole to enter Wonderland. Just head to Cecil Court, the West End’s most popular shopping street tucked away in an alley not far from Leicester Square. Often called Bookseller’s Row, the street, which is chock-a-block with independent stores, is a cornucopia of art, antiques, culture, curiosities, and books. The idea for an Alice-special store was born when Jake Fior chanced upon Sir John Tenniel’s original hand-painted Through The Looking Glass chessboard. One of the earliest known examples of Tenniel’s work, it led to the launch of the store in 2012. Today, the store offers a wide range of Alice iconography, including artworks, first edition books, rare illustration editions, stationery, clothing, Victorian top hats, chess sets, gift items, memorabilia, and more. A mini-museum showcases special items that Alice fans are sure to enjoy. The cynosure of all eyes, especially little ones, is Harley, the resident white rabbit who rules from his spot in the front window.
Foster Books: Located in the heart of Chiswick, this bookstore is housed in a charming 18th century building with bay windows and has been selling books for more than 50 years. The window, which dates back to 1790, is painted bright green and is piled high with vintage volumes. Outside, piles of £1 paperbacks, maps, and assorted book-related paraphernalia give the store a visible Diagon Alleyesque vibe straight out of Harry Potter. You almost expect Ollivanders to be next door! The owner, Stephen Foster, ran his own shop in Marylebone for 25 years before buying this store on the old Bath-to-London route from his parents in 2007. As Amazon and charity shops focused on hawking books at unbelievably low prices, he decided to focus on collectors’ items. Today, Foster Books is the place to go for antiquarian, hard-to-find, and rare books, fine bindings, and first editions. It has an online presence as well, but popping in for a browse may help you get books that aren’t available via the internet.
Libreria: A rather late addition to the London bookshop list is Libreria, which was launched by former Downing Street policymaker-turned-entrepreneur Rohan Silva in 2016. The labyrinth-like store was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, The Library of Babel. Designed by Spanish architects SelgasCano, Libreria is a mix of bright yellow shelves, mirrors that create the illusion of more space, and cosy reading nooks. The store aims to curate books to “maximise serendipity”. The shelves do away with regular sections like crime, poetry, travel, and self-help, and books are arranged according to themes such as ‘Wanderlust’, ‘Enchantment for the Disenchanted’, ‘The City’, and ‘Mothers, Madonnas, and Whores’. This lets you stumble upon unexpected literary treasures in a world that seems far removed from Amazon’s constricted net of algorithmic recommendations. Interestingly, Libreria has a no phones, tablets, or Wi-Fi policy, and believes that when here, the books need all your attention.
Apart from these must-visit shops, London has a range of specialty book stores: Any Amount of Books sells preloved books really, really cheap; Gay’s the Word, UK’s oldest LGBTQ+ bookshop, is now an institution; Stanfords, which opened in Covent Garden in 1853, specialises in travel books; while Books for Cooks in tony Notting Hill is a cookbook store and eatery.
There’s plenty more to peruse, if you don’t run out of days. Black Gull Books houses rare 19th and 20th century vintage fiction; Round Table Books stocks the best children’s books in a space that’s cheerful and bursting with colour; Gosh! in Soho is an industrial-style bookshop filled with vintage and new graphic novels and comics; and Koenig Books is a German-owned bookstore that specialises in all things art, architecture, and photography.
No bookshop crawl through London can end without a visit to the Southbank Centre Book Market, which draws inspiration from the bouquinistes selling second-hand books along the Seine in Paris. Located underneath Waterloo Bridge on Queen’s Walk, this market by the Thames riverbank offers the chance to enjoy a leisurely stroll as you make your way through a massive selection of second-hand books, prints, bookmarks, postcards, maps, and more.
Teja Lele is an independent editor and writes on books, travel and lifestyle.
