In January I went to Cambridge (UK) for a few days for work: I arrived on a Wednesday, went in to the office for workshops with colleagues on Thursday and Friday, had pleasing dinners (including one at Alimentum), and did a little evening walking around town. Because transatlantic airfare is so much cheaper if there’s a Saturday night stay involved, I flew home on a Sunday, which left me a Saturday free to take the train down to London. I’d been looking forward to doing some serious walking, in particular around Hampstead Heath, but it was cold and wet and I didn’t have waterproof shoes with me, so I opted instead to wander around near Kings Cross for a while, after which I spent much of the day in the British Museum, which was warm and dry and lovely.
When the rain let up, I did a little bit of walking, which led me to a few bookstores, though I only made one purchase. Still, I wanted to write about the London bookshops I saw, and to ask for recommendations: what bookshops should I seek out next time I’m there? Here’s what I saw this time around.
My first stop was the Oxfam shop on Bloomsbury Street, which I passed by chance and which looked quite inviting. They’ve got a decent selection of travel books and kids’ books, including some pretty tempting vintage kids’ books, though naturally I can’t remember the names of any, plus some cultural studies stuff, plus lots of novels, in which I wasn’t so interested.
I passed by The Atlantis Bookshop but didn’t go in, as occult books aren’t really my thing. But I couldn’t resist stopping in at the London Review Bookshop, which is cozy and comfortable and has an attached cafe, though the latter is small and was too crowded for me to want to eat there. I didn’t explore the downstairs level; the offerings on the ground floor were exciting enough. I already own rather a lot of books, and given the dollar/pound exchange rate it seems silly for me to go shopping at all in England, but I always do anyhow. I was tempted by Waterlog, about swimming England’s waterways, which I read about on a blog at some point last year, though now I can’t remember where. I do want to read Waterlog eventually, but the book I ended up not being able to resist was London Orbital, Iain Sinclair’s book about walking around the M25 motorway (117 miles, goes around London) over the course of a year. I am a sucker for walking, and cities, and for books about walking and/or cities, so this one is very exciting to me; I also like buying a book about a place when I am in that place. (The one book I bought on my last trip to London was Nigel Slater’s Eating for England.)
From there: onward to Lambs Conduit, home of Persephone Books, which I managed to find without consulting my map. On my first trip to London, in 2005, I stayed at a hostel on Montague Street, right by the British Museum, and did a lot of walking; on that trip, I walked past Persephone but didn’t go in: I hadn’t heard of it, and was on my way somewhere else, or was hungry, or something. I’ve since regretted not having been inside, and hoped to rectify it on this trip—but alas, I was confused/didn’t realize the ground floor was office space but that the shop was indeed also in the building and open, and I didn’t want to barge in on the nice lady working at her desk. Next time! I mean it!
As consolation: I stumbled across the Magma shop in Clerkenwell Road, which I hadn’t heard of before but which is full of art books/magazines and stationery and small satisfying things. I was tempted to buy Wreck This Journal but decided that if I do want it, I can buy it someplace closer to home.
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