Being a Sherlock Holmes fan is unlike belonging to any other fandom. Because Holmes didn’t just exist in stories. He, to this day, exists in this city, on streets that are still here, in buildings that are still standing, in a London that you can still, if you look at…
For the late-night Etsy browsers. You know who you are. Let’s get something straight: bookish shops are not bookshops. A bookshop is where you go to buy books. A bookish shop is where you go at 11pm when you should absolutely be asleep, fall into a rabbit hole, and emerge…
There are a lot of “best bookshops in London” lists out there. Most of them cover the same five shops in the same order with the same photograph of Daunt Books’ reading room. They’re not wrong, exactly — but they’re also not telling you much you can actually use. So…
There is something oddly predictable about watching people arrive in London for the first time. You see it at airports, at train stations, outside Tube exits. The slight pause. The scanning of familiar landmarks. The instinctive reach for a phone camera the moment they spot a red bus, a black…
London has always been a city that reads. You don’t have to go looking for literary London. It finds you; in the pub name you walk past every morning, in the square you cut through on the way to the tube, in the hospital you pass without knowing it appeared…