Sitting in the café of Berkelouw’s Paddington shop, you can see along the length of the first floor. One afternoon I noticed that on the left a sign hung above the packed shelves: ‘Fiction’. On the other side a similar sign, but this one said ‘Literature’. I pointed this out to my companion, wondering aloud how they decided how to divide the books.
‘It’s obvious,’ he said after a short pause. ‘Literature is what I read. Fiction is what everyone else reads.’
Notwithstanding this division, Berkelouw's offers a welcome to all varieties of reader, though it is those who are truly in love with books will find a spiritual home here. The ground floor is given over to new books, with an emphasis on literary fiction although as you venture deeper in the selection widens, including a small but excellent children’s section and a broad selection of non-fiction. The first floor has second hand books and, at the back, a jaw-dropping antiquarian collection, unsurprisingly but somewhat disappointingly sealed behind glass, both for climate control and to deter wishful browsing. On the top floor is a packed room of second-hand paperbacks where you can browse in solitude for hours.

Continued in Issue 1...