Question of the week: Could you talk about one of your favourite bookshops in London? "Long gone are the days when one could walk up Charing Cross Road and take one's pick of the many fascinating left-wing bookshops that lined this bibliophile's paradise. Since the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the funding that supported these impossibly cheap bookshops (funding which invariably came from the Communist Party of the USSR) has dried up and we are now left with drab outlets of ubiquitous chains such as Borders and Waterstones.
One bookstore, however, continues to wave the red flag of left-wing thinking, Bookmarks -- the Socialist Bookshop, appropriately located in Bloomsbury (1 Bloomsbury Street, WC1B 3QE), traditionally the heart of London's liberal intelligentsia. Much more than a front for the Socialist Workers Party of Great Britain, this shop maintains a wonderful stock of anti-establishment literature, ranging from flyers advertising direct action workshops to theoretical critiques of modern capitalism. To walk in the doors of this store is to realize that London still fosters modes of thinking that are radically different from those that dominate our modern consumerist society."
- Cornelius O’Boyle
* Photo by Clarissa~, used under Creative Commons, with thanks.
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