The independent bookshop district that does not announce itself
The concentration of independent bookshops in Bloomsbury is not accidental. The University of London is here, the British Museum is here, the publishers have been here since the 18th century. What is accidental is that they have survived.
The concentration of independent bookshops in Bloomsbury is not accidental. The University of London is here, the British Museum is here, the publishers have been here since the 18th century. The lawyers are in Gray's Inn to the east. The booksellers followed the institutions and the institutions kept them in business. What is accidental is that they have survived — the combination of academic tenure, museum trade, and the loyalty of the kind of person who travels specifically to buy books in person, the last of whom is apparently more numerous than the publishing industry's quarterly reports suggest.
The route is loose: Museum Street from the British Museum's north entrance to Great Russell Street, then west along the museum's south wall toward Gower Street, then north through the residential blocks to Marchmont Street and the Brunswick Centre. Gower Street has the university booksellers — Skoob Books in the basement of the Brunswick Centre, large and catalogued, and the kind of place that rewards an hour of stacking. Museum Street has the specialist antiquarians: maps, natural history, Victoriana, travel, the categories that survive because the internet has not made them irrelevant but has simply relocated the customer to whoever can afford the stock.
On a Tuesday — chosen here for its lack of event — the British Museum opens at ten. The Great Court is free to enter; the special exhibitions require a ticket. The reading room at the centre of the court is currently not a reading room but the architecture of the circular dome and the ring of reference shelves is visible from the floor. Go on a Tuesday before the school groups arrive. The Egyptian galleries are the ones to spend time in; the Elgin Marbles room requires a personal policy before entry.
Marchmont Street, north of the Brunswick Centre, has the domestic scale of Bloomsbury before the university expanded. The Italian deli on the corner has been there for decades; the café at the far end opens at eight. Buy something from the secondhand bookstalls outside Skoob before leaving the neighbourhood. The books outside are a pound each, which is the correct price for a discovery you did not know you were looking for.