Cabinets of curiosities: the bookshops of Charing Cross Road

London's indie booksellers, past and present.

By Yo Zushi Published 11 October 2012

Brought to book: exterior of Albert Jackson and Sons bookshop, Charing Cross Road, in 1938. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Almost a decade ago, I stumbled out of academia and found myself working at Quinto, an independent bookshop opposite the British Museum in London. It had recently been refurbished but the layout of the shop was as eccentric as the titles getting sun-bleached in the front window (a 1996 copy of A History of Phallic Worship, anyone?).
Downstairs, in the rarities room near the sci-fi and fantasy corridor, one of the tall shelves doubled as a door; it would swing open eerily upon the pressing of a plastic buzzer hidden behind some dusty old tome. There was nothing special in the room beyond it – just cobwebs, a few boxes sent over from head office in Hay-on-Wye – but its existence seemed to me to epitomise the character of the shop: in its best moments, it was as much a cabinet of curiosities as a place of business.
Its parent branch on Charing Cross Road, also called Quinto, had been selling second-hand and rare books for decades. Long before the American writer Helene Hanff immortalised the street in 84 Charing Cross Road (1970) – an account of her 20-year correspondence with a buyer at the antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co – the area enjoyed a storied association with the city’s literary scene and its accompanying book trade. In its 1950s heyday, denizens of the nearby drinking dens of Soho, from Dylan Thomas to Auberon Waugh, would stagger from shop to shop, scanning the heaving shelves.
Full story at the New Statesman