Literary London: Charing Cross Bookstores, Sherlock Holmes and the Dickens Museum

When I was little my grandfather said that, wherever I went, a book followed. This continues to hold true as I carry a 10 lb. book across London every day so I can read for a scant 20 minutes of my lunch hour. This love for all things literature is also one of the many reasons I chose London, a centuries old literary hub with dozens of author-centric museums, shops and cafes. 

The key places my literary adventures have taken me within London are the Charing Cross bookstores, the Dickens Museum and, my current favourite, the Sherlock Holmes Museum. Each deserves an post for itself. Actually, each bookshop along Charing Cross does as well, but there just isn’t enough time, so all in one will just have to do.

The Charing Cross bookstores are located along a three block stretch of Charing Cross and Cecil Ct. These used bookshops hold hundreds of literary treasures and my favourite was Cecil Court’s Alice Through the Looking Glass. Though other honourable mentions go to Pleasure of Past Times, which had a lovely selection of antique comics and film posters (Whovians, Trekkies, Jedi: make note) and Marchpane, which had a life sized Dalek among its large collection.

When you step into boutique-like Alice Through the Looking Glass, you feel as if you’ve truly spiralled “down the rabbit hole” and into another world. Especially when compared to the endearing clutter of the adjacent bookstores. Brightly lit by an elegant chandelier suspended from the high ceiling, the shop is neatly decorated with “Alice” memorabilia including tapestries, sketches, a simple looking glass and an assortment of tea cups and towels. However, it was sitting on the soft couch by the window where you could see the shop’s main attraction- the ornate tomes lining the antique glass cabinet and neat rows of shelves.  

Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkein, Charlotte Bronte, J.K. Rowling, A.A. Milne, J.M. Barrie, the Brothers Grimm… Alice Through the Looking Glass had copies upon copies of all of these classic titles and more— all collectors editions, all bound in beautiful fabrics or with lightly printed pages or appearing much simple but bearing the tell-tale marks of a first or second addition. All costing hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of pounds. This, despite clear signs that I could never afford a single book from this shop, did not stop the employee from allowing me to pour over the books for well over an hour.

The Charing Cross bookstores include a number of themed used bookshops. Included among them are a music shop that only stock books of and on music and those who create it, a mystery novel shop that boasts having every Sherlock Holmes story and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sized shop filled to the brim with maps and Atlases. There is literally a bookshop for everyone and I absolutely love it!

The Dickens Museum was a wonderful little museum. Partially situated in what was once Dicken’s home, the first and second floors had been filled with Dicken’s actual furniture and spattered with little informational plaques. My favourite part of the museum were Dicken’s bookshelves, which had a mixture of books he had written (and signed) and books he had read. That and a little box that, if you stepped into it, you could have someone on the outside of the box take a picture and you looked like a ghost. With a lot of bending and twisting, I managed to get a shaky shot of myself —which I am not sharing, thank you very much.

While I have read a number of Dicken’s work, “A Christmas Carole” is the only one that has ranked among my favourites, though I very much enjoyed “Oliver Twist” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” With this in mind, this museum was not my favourite, though it would likely be much more of a hit with larger Dickens fans.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum- Don’t think, don’t question. Just go. It was amazing and one of my favorite and most memorable London experiences. Located on 221 B Baker Street, the house looks exactly as I the one I imagined the great detective and his faithful doctor residing in while reading the Conan Doyle novels. The line for the entrance was down the block, but the hour wait was worth it. In fact, if that hour long wait had just been to get into the gift shop, it still would have been worth it. The little shop contains Holmes memorabilia of all kinds including the traditional deerstalkers, pipes and violins as well as oven mitts (I got an oven mitt. How bad is that?), tea pots that look like books, music boxes, pens and paper, magnets and buttons, shot glasses and a range of different versions of the works. They even had a few Benedict Cumberbatch “Sherlock” items, though I was happy to not that these items only made up about 5% of the stock.

​It was fantastic, wonderful, amazing… if you have the chance- go. There is also a Beatles store next door and, down the road and across from Madam Tussauds, a souvenir shop with some of the best deals I’ve seen in London. 

All of these places have been absolutely spectacular, standing out in my mind for a number of different reasons and I highly, highly, highly recommend Charing Cross and 221 Bto anyone with even the smallest love for books. I do hope to go to other literary spots during the rest of my adventure while some of these spots are in London, others I have mapped out are in Oxford and Edinburgh, so look forward to those post #literarylovers! As for Harry Potter… well… that one is going to be a post in and of itself!