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13 Blenheim Crescent, W11 2EE

This pretty bookshop advertises itself as ‘the destination for beautiful books,’ which could mean that this is where all beautiful books should go, or that this is where you should go if you want to find beautiful books… Either interpretation seems worthwhile.

Notting Hill Bookshop itself started life as an exclusive travel book shop, like Daunt Books, in 1979, but in 2011, twelve year after its notorious ‘appearance’ in ‘Notting Hill’ (the film), it widened its stock to cover leading and popular titles, and has a wide range of film-related items including notebooks, enamel badges and other items of memorabilia to send tourists and booklovers alike home happily. When we were there, there were many visitors and passers by who stopped to take their photos and selfies outside the shop, and this even twenty years after the film’s initial release. Its success story is measured by the fact that it opens for a full eight hours on Sunday up till 6pm. The people working in the shop were all very friendly and knowledgeable, and ready to help the confused or enthusiastic book lover. While perhaps a little less concerned with the more literary scope of the nearby Lutyens and Rubinstein, the Notting Hill Bookshop is well worth a visit, and certainly a complementary experience.

Its main busy hours were the edges of the week and weekends, with the middle of the week being a lot less frantic. One thing we were told was that the locals (except the eccentric ones) often missed it geographically whereas the tourists always made a beeline for it. A pleasant and colourful experience.

Contact details

Address: 13 Blenheim Crescent, W11 2EE
Phone number: 020 7229 5260
Website: thenottinghillbookshop.co.uk
Email: info@thenottinghillbookshop.co.uk
Opening hours: Mon – Fri: 9am – 7pm; Saturday: 9am -7pm; Sunday: 10am – 6pm
Facebook: @nottinghillbookshop
Twitter: @nottinghillbook
Nearest tube station: Ladbroke Grove
Buses: 7, 23, 52, 452

10 King Street, Richmond Surrey, TW9 1ND

I unapologetically declare this a personal favourite.

The shop itself was built back in rock star days by local inhabitant Pete Townsend, who named it ‘The Magic Bus,’ extending it (badly) and then selling it when his interests moved elsewhere. It was then run by Helena for 35 years as a more literary bookshop, and is currently headed by Madeleine and Kirsten, whose humour and enthusiasm for good books kept me there for an hour longer than I intended with their anecdotes and, what we might have called before its appropriation by the politically incorrect, banter. There were suggestions for reading when I pushed – ‘Educated’ – Tara Westover and ‘Silence of the Girls’ – Pat Barker were two I noted down. ‘The Diary of a Bookseller’ (2017) by Shaun Bythell was identified as something specifically for me. They were right.
The Open Book seems like a tiny breadshop or children’s sweet seller when you look from a distance, but, tardis-like, its innards suck you in to glorious displays of different titles and subject areas, idiosyncratically grouped in ways that have you as interested in the shop philosophy as its books.
The Open Book has an unapologetically clunky webpage address and marginally off the track twitter account – @the openbook2 (@theopenbook is owned by someone with one follower who follows no one, a twitter account for writing books – none as yet written or ready to be discussed, it would appear). They’re clearly not bothered about slick marketing, and it doesn’t seem to have mattered as work of mouth and the frequenting of locals has clearly made this one of the most popular bookshops in South West London. They will find and order practically any book you’re after, also offering crazy cards, postcards and funky gift wrapping paper. A bare stone’s throw from the sober stationery smells of W.H.Smiths, this is like a date with Grace Slick after an afternoon perambulation with Teresa May.
In 2012 Michael Frayn declared The Open Book his favourite bookshop, and every so often David Attenborough (at the original request of his brother Richard) pops in for an hour to have a chat, a look round and to sign any books of his on display. These wouldn’t in any case be books that stay unsold on the shelves for very long, but now when locals get them home and find them signed by the author, that’s rather a lovely surprise, I would think, especially if they are bought as presents for relatives or friends.
Local events are regular – as an Independent Bookshop, they were offered an extract from the new book by Robert Macfarlane; Underland and hosted a ‘Boozy Bookclub’ on the 31st of May to celebrate the occasion. I unfortunately just missed out on that. They declared themselves supportive of local writers, evidenced by the corner of the shop sporting self-published tomes and local stroll and photographic books. I scribbled titles furiously onto the nearest scrap of paper I could grab. Writers, book clubs, literary lunches, evening events (some in Oxford) and a ‘two writers discuss’ workshop in Roehampton on ‘Winston Churchill’ featuring Tim Battle and Paul Crowe. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were also said to be local customers, often on the lookout for ideas for a new film – I made a hopeful note that we might explore this possible route for a couple of our titles…
Kirsten was the first of the two people I met in the shop. She had been a Head of English in Brighton but had become disillusioned with the way the art of teaching has been reduced to annual tests and targets. She had decided a little career change might be worth considering, and, it seems hasn’t looked back since coming to ‘The Open Book.’ I asked how they survived in a tough business world, and they agreed that it was the combination of not being part of a chain and having the most extraordinary generous and loyal local customers – in every sense. Every day in the shop offers something different, something unexpected. I said it sounded a bit like teaching used to be back in the 1980s and early 1990s. So maybe not quite a career change, more a case of following your heart to a place where you are valued and that can make the most of your talents.
Madeleine was the second person there – an informative and entertaining mine of local information, taking me to corners of the shop that offered all sorts of local information to be found in fiction where you might not know to look for it. She found paragraphs from books that referenced this part of the world – especially Brentford – and her encyclopaedic knowledge seemed heaven sent for such a place. I can see I have made a note to visit a local place in Brentford called ‘The Snail Sanctuary’. I have put a red asterisk which is shorthand for ‘do this’. Not a moment you’d imagine possible on a visit to a local bookshop, but then this is the Open Book – if you haven’t been there yet – it’s time to go.

Contact details

Address: 10 King Street, Richmond Surrey, TW9 1ND
Phone number: 020 8940 1802
Website: theopenbook0.wixsite.com
Email: theopenbook@btconnect.com
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 9.30 to 18.00; Sunday 11.00 to 18.00
Facebook: @theopenbookrichmond
Twitter: @theopenbook2
Nearest tube station: Richmond
Buses: 65, 190, 337, 371, 391, 419, 490, 493, H22, H37

141 Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, London, W5 1RH

Part of the social development of London recently has been the suburbs within suburbs, and Pitshanger has recently become one of these. A mile or so from Ealing Broadway in West London, it boasts a full range of shops to serve its increasing number of families and schools. The potential footfall has also increased in line with the development of the area and one place to benefit from that has been the Pitshanger Bookshop.

When I spoke to the Fiona, the woman running the shop who bought it eight years ago, she immediately enthused about her work and how the shop had developed in recent years. It seemed a remarkable achievement to have done all this herself (though she has help from Hazel, Ruth and Vanda), and it made me think about the power of enthusiasm and energy in such a project. Many cynics still say that the internet will eventually raze all shops to the ground, and that physical books will suffer both for not being a digital commodity and for the need to pay for transporting them, which adds to the cost. However, like vinyl records, they are something that is refusing to go quietly. The joy of handling something tangible to read, like a book, with your own private access has not experientially been emulated by the eBook, nor I would argue will it ever be. The independent bookshop has a huge part to play in keeping books away from the mausoleum and under people’s eyes, and this is clearly one that is helping to fulfil that aim.
Fiona said that when running the shop it helped her to look at people who visited it in terms of customer groups: older readers, families and the countless local schools. Mums made up many members of the bookgroups which, while they all seemed to prefer fiction, worked differently through their various recommendations. These could come from anyone, but books that reading groups had read and recommended collectively would always be out on show.

The shop has an excellent children’s section from pre-school KS2 to senior school and processes simple text orders from local schools and, like Owl Bookshop, are ensconced in areas of the community that self-generate further interest and orders. Without that, it seems that a bookshop would not survive. Fiona has the advantage of owning the shop so, unlike Camden Lock Books, doesn’t have to factor in impossible climbing rents into the subsistence calculations.

I asked about local authors and was directed to a corner of the shop where their work and books were on show. From the professional to the self-published, authors were all encouraged to write their own pieces which were put alongside their books, raising the profile with considerable success.
Fiona had only been at Pitshanger Books for eight years, but the shop has been open for twenty. She clearly enjoys the autonomous nature of running it, but admits that it was initially a labour of love, and when she first started there in 2011, it reduced her previous income by almost 80%. However, the fact that she lives locally and is always in touch with her community, even when the shop is shut, makes for a quality of life that many in the industry might envy. Unsurprisingly, she is often badly treated by her suppliers as a ‘little person’, as they can be particularly ruthless, inviting the dog eat dog image. She declares herself worried for the future of independent shops in general, feeling that people like her had to regard the enterprise more like a hobby if they weren’t to occasionally become dispirited. Her day-to-day concerns being which books to stock or more a case of what not to stock – space was always the overriding concern – but she found wholesalers to be brilliant, and said she had received good advice and expert opinion in the main from ‘The Bookseller’ – the British magazine, reporting on the publishing industry since 1858, and still surviving, with a circulation of 30,000.

Fiona described how there were always happenings in a bookshop that made you feel it was all worthwhile. One of her recent stories was about a young boy who had journeyed up to the shop at the weekend to buy a book he had been saving up for, and when he emptied out all his cash, found he was £3 short. An older man, a regular customer, had been listening in to the conversation and asked the boy why the book was so important to him. He said he had seen it in the shop a while back and had been saving up for it for nearly two months, so the man put his hand in his pocket to produce the additional £3 necessary. Great story.

Fiona admitted that she often found herself going into other bookshops on her day off to find new titles that she hadn’t seen online or in the Bookseller. Now that is a labour of love, though she declared that this was often when she had some of her most exciting ideas about changes or developments in the shop.

Another must-read she mentioned was ‘Bertram’s Buyers Notes,’ released every month and invariably possessing many good tips and suggestions. So clearly, I felt, this independent bookshops collective, whilst disparate and often as different as any two shops selling the same things could be, is nevertheless a community. Whilst not exactly thriving financially, it is certainly still a force spiritually, something which could be applied to the concept of ‘community’ in general these days. When that’s gone, there won’t be any need for anything local, for any shops, any advice or any help between people. Community demand keeps all this stuff alive. It might therefore be a good time to get down to your local bookshop now, and this isn’t charity, this is self-help, at every level…

Contact details

Address: 141 Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, London, W5 1RH
Phone number: 020 8991 8131
Website: www.pitshangerbooks.co.uk
Email: info@pitshangerbooks.co.uk
Weekday opening hours: Monday – Saturday 9.30 – 5.30; closed Sundays
Facebook: @ThePitshangerBookshop
Twitter: @pitshangerbook1
Nearest tube station: Hanger Lane (14 minutes), Ealing Broadway (19 minutes)
Buses: E2, E9

1-2 Station Approach, Kew, TW9 3QB

On the day we visited, the Kew Bookshop looked from outside like the cover of a Jackson Browne album, ‘Late For The Sky,’ itself inspired by the 1954 painting L’Empire des Lumieres (‘Empire of Light’), by Belgian surrealist René Magritte. And it would not be forward of us to suggest that this picture perfect bookshop is perhaps itself an Empire of Light as far as books are concerned, especially if you are a student.

The book itself is situated in a small enclave that likes to be known as ‘Kew Village,’ in the area around Kew Gardens station, replete with delicious restaurants and other local shops. It is a proud member of the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland, an umbrella trade body founded to promote retail bookselling in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Along with all other members, it is part of the National Book Token scheme in the UK and shops which represent 95% of British retail booksellers.

It is mainly concerned with local schools, always ready to play a role in bringing authors into primary schools. Weinay and Anna run the store pro-actively, trading on experience and knowledge. Their key dates are World Book Day in March and a Literacy Focus Week and book fairs in schools. They hire storytellers, and reckon that 10% of their business is connected with schools. Their regular customer base therefore can subside during holiday time, though the tourists help. They currently have no link with Kew Gardens, though they did have book festivals with them in 2014 and 2015. Their other branch Sheen is run separately (see elsewhere on the site).

Approximately 50% of their books are for children, one of the highest ratios we saw in all our time in indy bookshops, though they also had excellent general adult fiction and non-fiction sections. They weren’t over-concerned with stocking all of the popular books that airports might obsess over, but they liked to offer prize-winning books (though not perhaps ‘Richard and Judy’). They offered a reflection tha peer to peer chats about books was vital to them, so clearly spent time talking to their customers, who seemed to trust them from what we could see. They loved it when parents brought children into the shop simply to ‘look around’.

They had organised book launches for up to 30 people, subsequently stocking signed copies and offering refreshments at the evening, though they didn’t offer discounts on their books as they felt it ‘devalued writers’ work’. There were book clubs connected with the shop who bought their copies direct from the shop. Its superb location to the right of the exit from the station meant that there would always be a traveller footfall that could always throw a curveball into the mix as regards taste. We would hazard a guess that anyone visiting would find something interesting and to their taste here.

Contact details

Address: 1-2 Station Approach, Kew, TW9 3QB
Phone number: 0020 8940 0030
Website: hewsonbooks.co.uk
Email: kew@hewsonbooks.co.uk
Facebook: Kew Bookshop
Nearest tube station: Kew Gardens (overground and district line)
Buses: 235, 237, E8