After a series of past lives in various West End locations, Skoob now occupies a tunnel-like space in the basement of Bloomsbury’s Brunswick Centre. Its subterranean stacks (and a 10% student discount) draw plenty of trade from the nearby universities, but it’s a popular spot with London bibliophiles of all ages.
The shop’s holdings (around 55,000 titles) are regularly refreshed with stock from the Oxford warehouse, also run by personable owner Chris Edwards and home to well over a million books.
Personally, I’m a big fan of their dedicated shelf for old-fashioned orange Penguin paperbacks, but there’s also extensive non-fiction covering almost every subject imaginable – from philosophy, biography, maths and science to languages, literature and criticism, art, history, economics and politics.