Not all cafés are literary cafes. Some have music so loud you can’t hear yourself think. Others seem designed to encourage you to finish your coffee and leave as quickly as possible. And then there are the places where every table is occupied by somebody attending their fifth Zoom meeting…
Every article about London’s bookshops eventually recommends the same places. Even mine Daunt Books. Hatchards. Foyles.Word on the Water. Fair enough. They’re all excellent. But once you’ve visited the obvious choices, you start looking for somewhere else. Somewhere that feels a little more accidental. The sort of place you discover…
One of the things I love most about London is that it rarely feels like a single city. Walk far enough and the atmosphere changes completely. A busy high street gives way to quiet residential streets. A cluster of modern office buildings suddenly opens onto a churchyard that has stood…
London is often described as a city of museums, galleries, and historic landmarks. What people mention less often are its libraries. Not simply as places to borrow books, but as places to spend time. Some are grand institutions filled with manuscripts and literary treasures. Others are quiet public spaces tucked…
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. There’s a whole economy out here for people who love reading as an entire personality, — the bags, the wall art, the advent calendars, the vases shaped like classic novels. And honestly? It’s brilliant. This is my curation of the…
There are a lot of “London’s best bookshops” lists out there. Most of them cover the same five shops in the same order with the same photograph of Daunt Books’ reading room. So here’s a slightly different take: not just which bookshops are worth your time, but why, and more…
London has always been a city that reads. London has always been a city that reads. You don’t have to go looking for bookish 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…