Lighthouse Bookshop

Elaine Henry opened Word Power Books on West Nicolson Street in 1994; Mairi Oliver bought it in 2017 and renamed it Lighthouse, keeping the radical mission and sharpening it — an unapologetically activist, intersectional, feminist, antiracist and LGBTQ+ bookshop and community space of some ten thousand titles in Edinburgh's Southside. It runs the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair each November and a Book Fringe in August, was nominated Scotland's best independent bookshop in 2020, and treats bookselling as organising by other means. A shop with a politics is a rare and useful thing; this one wears it on every shelf, and the events calendar runs into 2026 without a gap.