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I'm going to London next weekend and i would like to check out some bookshops while i'm there, any tips? I'm interested in books on typography and design, especially out-of-print classics. Tips on great books to pick up are also appreciated!

Go to Charing Cross Road. You'll find a few book shops with old titles. I bought "Printing Types", Updike, 2nd edition. Happy! Tried to find "Essay on Typography", but with no success, only the facsimile. Good fishing!

It would be worth checking out Collinge & Clark in Bloomsbury. They have an excellent selection of old specimens and type books. They're usually closed on weekends, but their schedule is a bit erratic, so you never know.

And it's a shame you won't be in town the following weekend, when the Ephemera Society has one of their big fairs. Those are an absolute treasure trove!

Superb, thanks a lot! i'll check those out. I'm staying until tuesday, so i'll have time to look into Collinge and Clarke too.

I read somewhere that both Foyles and Maggs have typography books, anyone know anything about them? How about Zwemmers? Foyles is pretty famous i gather, but i'm totally blank when it comes to London shops. Harrods who?

Foyles are good for current publications and often have recently out-of-print titles but won't have anything especially rare. They are a very big store with well-stocked departments on most subjects, and a very nice neon sign which I think dates from the 1930s.

Maggs are a specialist antiquarian dealer.

Sadly I don't think Zwemmers have any stores left in London.

I've been to Maggs a couple of times but have not found much type related material.

There is a secondhand book market outside the British Film Institute under Waterloo Bridge on the South Bank at the weekends, not particularly type based unfortunately.

Tim

Thanks again everybody, i think i've got plenty to go on here. I'm definitely checking out Collinge and Clarke, i looked it up on Wikipedia and found that it's the store from “Black Books” – which my girlfriend recently bought the entire series of on dvd. Now she's got a reason to come with me to look at musty old type books! Yay!

Oh yes, that is the exterior of Collinge & Clarke used in the Black Books comedy series. The interior scenes, though, were shot in a studio. The real Collinge & Clarke interior is very small and cramped. But consider yourself fortunate that the booksellers have quit smoking: one used to need a gas mask when visiting the shop.

Collinge & Clarke has an incredible selection of private press books and books on printing & type: The best I have seen anywhere outside of a library. Cecil Court is a small street with quite a few specialist antiquarian books shops

I watched a bit of Black Books, and found it interesting to see how parts of the interior of the fictional shop were modelled on Collinge & Clarke but made much larger.

Just around the corner from C&C on Marchmont street is Judd Books, which is sometimes a good source for remaindered books on type.