I found Book Mongers totally by accident when I was looking for Brixton Village. Brixton has many great places, give it time and no doubt it will be what Shoreditch has become, although I think it has a few years in it yet. Book Mongers is the sort of place that anyone who has a [...]

The Daunt Books flagship store is one of the most glorious bookshops you will ever see. It mimics a beautiful old library from one of England’s palaces and reminds me of Lord Groan’s personal library in Gormenghast. Here they don’t arrange books by alphabetical order but by country as it’s primarily a travel bookshop, so [...]

Jambala is a most welcoming little shop, chockablock full of books with shelves crammed to bursting and piles stacked up in every spare corner I can never walk by without sticking my head in and having a look around, no doubt finding a well loved JD Salinger or such like. It’s run by the London [...]

I hate to admit it but I don’t buy books from bookshops anymore. Why bother when you can get them online for half the price. I know, I’m a contributor to the reason shops like John Sandoe go out of business. That all being said I do believe it’s better to recycle products and that [...]

Koenig books hosts a collection of joyfully pretentious art books with beautiful covers and artistically out of focus photographs. It does have a huge selection though so if you do have £50 to burn on a book you will look through once then leave around to use as a coaster you will no doubt find [...]

Magma is one of those lovely bookshops which sells all those fatuous yet inspiring graphics books and expensive documentary dvd’s about fashion designers, plus every arty magazine in circulation, literally floor to ceiling, with guys who dress like members of Blur standing around with an open book looking into space, mouth slightly open as they’ve [...]

Tucked away up a narrow flight of stairs above the Soho bookshop on Charing Cross road is a little designer bookshop specialising in fashion and art books, many of which are hard to find. It’s also home to a vast collection of glossy magazines that, let’s be honest no one ever really reads but our [...]

Art books, graphic design books and magazines which are hard to find is what you get here. It’s a tiny shop packed floor to ceiling with “flick-through-once-and-leave-around-to-look-cool books” with the same being said for magazines which are 75% adverts, 15% artistic photoshoots and 5% boring articles on people who don’t matter. I am by the [...]

All the people who work here are idiots*. I don’t think they mean to be but they have the mindset that people who work in second had book/record stores have – ie. that they are superior and know far more on the subject than you ever will. They always have industrial jazz or worse, Bob [...]

I use Foyle’s as my own personal lending library, buy and take back later and it has a great cafe too. Far and away the best bookshop in London, it’s an independent version of what Borders used to be. I think it’s accurate to say that Ray’s cafe is the central meeting point for anyone [...]