Arthur Probsthain

Arthur Probsthain opened this bookshop in 1903 on Bury Place before moving it to 41 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum, in 1905. It has stayed in the same family since: his nephew Walter Sheringham took over on Probsthain's death in 1941, Sheringham's sons Michael and Lesley joined in the 1970s, and Lesley's sons Tim and Christopher now run the shop their great-great-uncle founded. The stock, some 150,000 volumes, specialises in Asian and African subjects, from academic monographs to a handwritten Quran, drawing custom from the university departments and diplomats nearby. A tearoom called Tea and Tattle now shares the premises, serving customers browsing the shelves. The shop appears under its own name in Ranulph Fiennes's 1991 novel The Feather Men. Little about the shopfront, with its dark wood shelving, has changed across four generations of family ownership.