Bookmongers

American-born bookseller Patrick Kelly opened Bookmongers in 1992, taking premises previously occupied by T. W. Brown & Sons, a motor and cycle works dating to 1912. More than three decades on, Kelly still runs the single Brixton shop, stacked floor to ceiling with secondhand and antiquarian titles organised by subject, plus a map chest of old charts and prints. Fiction, poetry, local history and out-of-print academic works are traded and bought over the counter, with credit given for part-exchange. A shop cat, Popeye, is a fixture among the shelves. Bookmongers has no second premises beyond a UK delivery service for online orders, and regulars still direct newcomers by the second left from Brixton tube station.