London bookshops
Literary exits
Bookshops in London are disappearing thick and fast. One of the latest casualties is Angel Books in Camden Passage, a great favourite of London-RIP. This follows hot on the heels of the independent bookshop, Islington Green and it's not unreasonable to suppose that this may have a little something to do with the massive Borders that's opened in the N1 centre.
London bookshops RIP: Roe and Moore - stomach vs books
Closures are happening all over the place. Just recently, I was in Bloomsbury next to the British Museum. One of those shops that you always look in was Roe and Moore, a fantastic bookshop that sold 20th century art and design publications. It has just shut down and was being repainted a gaudy green, and looked as if it would reopen as a Thai cafe. The proprietor of Roe and Moore was a bearded, rather cerebral chap who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of modern design and graphics. It's sad that central London is able to feed the stomach, but not the mind.
London bookshops RIP: Sisterwrite
Going back a bit further, North London was something of a bookworm's paradise in days of yore, especially for those of us who fancied ourselves as a bit alternative. One of its most notable offerings was Sisterwrite on Upper Street. This was really the ultimate feminist bookshops. Rumour has it that they didn't let men in at all, but I don't think this is true, although I don't remember an awful lot of guys hanging out there. Obviously, Sisterwrite sold books by women, but not just your Viragos or Women's Press. It was full of fascinatingly obscure imports and radical feminist magazines. You could spend hours browsing in there (unless you were a bloke of course... joke). London-RIP thinks it closed in around 1990, but correct us if we're wrong.
London bookshops RIP: Silver Moon - books vs botox
Another great feminist bookshop was Silver Moon on Charing Cross Road. London-RIP remembers this as being a bit more mainstream than Sisterwrite. It flourished in the 1980s, but is no longer in the original shop - it's moved to Foyles, I believe. Now we're all so gloriously post modernist there's the idea that feminism somehow wasn't as much fun as blowing a year's salary on a pair of shoes or having botox injected into your forehead. This is not true. These bookshops were fascinating places that were genuinely devoted to ideas and the spirit of inquiry. They were a lot of fun. So there.
London bookshops RIP: Classic Compendium
You can't write about bookshops without mentioning Compendium, that mother of all left-wing bookshops in Camden High Street near the lock. Compendium was fantastic. It had the best selection of books on music ever known, as well as tons of quite imaginative left-wing stuff. I remember buying a comic book starring Tintin as an anarcho socialist there. Don't ask me why. In the late 80s it was also the only place you could buy books on astrology and the occult, should you have wanted to do so. Downstairs was full of books by people like Jacques Derrida. So if you really wanted to be pretentious, that was the place to be. Obscure reel-to-reel tapes and videos were a Compendium sideline. It closed in 2000. What happened to these last remnants of the counter culture? Why did they all close? Are people just not interested in politics now? Or what? Answers on an email to London-rip please.
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| Message: | 1/1 |
| Date and time: | 03/04/2008 at 08:17:44 |
| Sender: | gfw |
| good bookshop was Colletts on Charing Cross Rd. Plenty of interesting stuff . Closed late 80's?? | |
