Bookstores in London

[Viva June]

I will be in London for a couple of days in February. Where should I go if I want to buy some books? More precisely, I want to find some out-of-the-way secondhand dealers or shops favouring interesting genres/niches.

[Masonwire]

Try Book Exchange (near Notting Hill Gate). You'll always find some cheap treasure.

[The New Nonsense]

Treadwells! It's a classic!

Treadwells

34 Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 7PB
info@treadwells-london.com | Ph: 020 7240 8906

[Viva June]

Thank you, Masonwire and Nonsense. Treadwell's looks almost too esoteric for me, like you need to wear pince-nez and a cravat to even enter.

[Proteus]

Naturally you will be going to Charing Cross Road, which is heaving with second hand book shops. Make sure you check out their creepy basements. There's also a chap in Camden Lock has a nice little bookshop with a very good selection. I forget what it's called (Compendium?), but head for the Lock and look around. He was the only bookseller left there last time I checked. Booksellers also gather under the bridge by the National Film Theatre. I feel their stock has declined in quality over the years, but its still a nice spot and worth a stroll if you want to catch some busking string quartets or skateboarding teenagers.

[Odalisque]

While it's true that Charing Cross Road still has enough bookshops to be worth investigating, it has become a sad shadow of what it was when I first explored it in the 1960s. In those days, it seemed to have almost nothing but bookshops. Now, lots of what were once bookshops are devoted to selling other things. Even what was once the northern half of Foyles no longer sells books.

[Viva June]

Charing Cross Road proved unfruitful, but thanks anyway, Proteus and Odalisque. The shops there all seemed to deal in first editions, and although I did come very close to buying a Robert Lowell collection, the prices were ultimately a bit too much for me.

The trip was not wholly in vain, though: in the Books and Comics Exchange at Notting Hill Gate, mentioned by Masonwire, I found a cheap copy of Leviathan 4: Cities, which includes a fantastic story by Michael Cisco.