Here's where we are...

We are located in the Broadway Shopping Mall, which is a “compact and bijoux” collection of coffee bars and independent businesses on the ground floor above St. James’s Park Underground Station in Westminster.

The building itself is rightly famous as the headquarters of Transport for London, designed by Charles Holden in the 1920’s [I promise a further opinionated blog at some point on the fascinating history of the building and its friezes]. It looks not unlike the monolithic hub edifice in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and was the tallest structure in London when it was built.

This means we are across the road from New Scotland Yard, the most famous police station in the world; we are round the corner from Buckingham Palace, home of the most famous lady in the world; and one minutes walk away from Westminster Abbey, which thanks to The Da Vinci Code is probably the most famous church in the world.

At lunchtime we can set our watches by the chimes of Big Ben, the clock on the Houses of Parliament; we are surrounded by the minor government departments that keep Britain ticking; and we are a stones throw [although I would not advise an empirical test] from St James’s Park, which used to be London’s leper colony.

And so here we are, three hundred square feet of bookselling empire, in possibly the most prestigious and powerful few hundred square yards on the planet. So now all you have to do is come and buy some books…