THE FINAL CHAPTER
BOOKSHOPS
SCHOOL OF LIFE
A brand ‘devoted to developing emotional intelligence’, the School of Life stocks books with titles such as How To Stay Sane and How To Change The World. Its shop in Bloomsbury is also home to card games to help you find your ideal partner, career crisis prompt cards and scented candles designed to invoke Plato’s concept of utopia.
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70 Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AB.
020 7833 1010
CLAIRE DE ROUEN BOOKS
With tomes including works by David Bailey, Nick Knight and Diane Arbus, this tiny bookshop – established above a sex shop on Charing Cross Road in 2005 – is always swarming with fashion students and photography buffs. While its owner Claire sadly passed away in 2012, Royal College of Art-trained painter Lucy Moore continues to lead a new chapter for this Soho icon.
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125 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0EW.
020 7287 1813
SKOOB
This first-rate second-hand bookshop recycles knowledge on a vast number of subjects, from philosophy, maths and science to art, literature and politics. Its spacious shop in the Brunswick Centre is crammed with over 55,000 titles and, unlike its name, the service isn’t backwards. The personable staff can help you locate a proverbial needle in a literary haystack.
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66 The Brunswick, Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AE.
020 7278 8760
STANFORDS
Since 1901, Covent Garden’s famous map and travel bookshop has helped the likes of Ernest Shacklewell and Florence Nightingale, as well as mere mortals from across the globe, find their way. Don’t miss the giant A to Z map of London in the basement, the room full of globes or its new café decorated with historic maps from the Edward Stanford Cartographic Collection.
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12-14 Long Acre, WC2E 9LP.
020 7836 1321
FOSTERS BOOKSHOP
This Chiswick bookshop has been in owner Stephen Foster’s family for over 45 years and specialises in antiquarian books and rare first editions. Stephen also enjoys a second career in film and has stocked the shelves of fictional characters including James Bond and Sherlock Holmes with topical and period-accurate publications.
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183 Chiswick High Road, W4 2DR.
020 8995 2768
LIBRERIA
As bookshops around the country collapse, this shiny new shrine to the written word stands in defiance of the recession. Conceived by Second Home’s founders Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton – a buzzing co-working space located next door – this bright yellow bastion of bookselling places its spotlight firmly on cutting-edge independent publishers. Its stock is arranged not in alphabetical order or by standard genres, but by subjects such as ‘Family’, ‘Love’ and ‘Enchantment for the Disenchanted’, while guest curators including award-winning writer Jeanette Winterson and founder of New York Review Books Edwin Frank will select shelves of their favourite titles. There is also a strict no-phones policy to save you from any digital distractions, while its bookbinding workshops and basement printing press serves to cement its dedication to creating and preserving literature in its physical form.
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65 Hanbury Street, E1 5JP.
No phone.
MAISON ASSOULINE
This cathedral of culture from luxury French publishing empire Assouline is part bookstore, part museum, part plush cocktail bar. Browse their extensive coffee table books on fashion, art and architecture, sip champagne in the Swans Bar or ascend the grand staircase in the former banking hall to lose yourself in rooms devoted to quiet contemplation and cabinets of curiosities.
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196A Piccadilly, W1J 9DY.
020 3327 9370
ARTWORDS BOOKSHOP
With two outposts populating artist-dense areas (Hoxton’s Rivington Street and Broadway Market in London Fields), Artwords and its collection of contemporary visual publications are well positioned. Head there to brush up on your knowledge of fine art, photography and graphic design or browse its comprehensive range of international industry magazines.
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69 Rivington Street, EC2A 3AY.
020 7729 2000
LUTYENS & RUBINSTEIN
Literary agents Sarah Lutyens and Felicity Rubinstein opened a shop in 2009 with the aim of selling only books that they loved to read. To this day, their excellent literary taste and devotion to selecting titles that come with a personal endorsement has led to Lutyens & Rubinstein becoming a much-loved landmark in Notting Hill. It is also for this reason that you will find all manner of narrative in their light-filled shop, from fiction and non-fiction to children’s books, poetry and art, as well as a section dedicated to their all-time favourite reads. Naturally, staff members are brilliant at recommendations. It is also home to a selection of equally idiosyncratic extras, including paperweights, reading glasses, illustrations by Hugo Guinness and homemade preserves.
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21 Kensington Park Road, W11 2EU.
020 7229 1010
GOSH! COMICS
A little comic shop with a reputation that dwarfs its size, Gosh! has brought fans of capes and kapows together for 25 years. Its range of graphic novels is second to none and encompasses the standard superhero stuff through to cult manga and original underground artwork. There is no better place in London to get your geek on.
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1 Berwick Street, W1F 0DR.
020 7636 1011
