Chaucer Bookshop

An antiquarian bookshop inside Canterbury's walls since 1956, in an eighteenth-century building on Beer Cart Lane — a street name that deserves a bookshop — and owned since 1976 by Sir Robert Sherston-Baker, whose half-century as proprietor makes him nearly as established as the stock. Around twenty thousand books fill two floors, only a third of them listed online, which is the correct ratio for a shop that wants you to come in; fine bindings, maps, prints and modern firsts hold the serious end. Membership of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association and its international league table the trade's credentials — the shop wears them lightly and prices in pencil.