Even if you don’t have anything on the to-read list, stop at Daunt Books in Marylebone to browse the books and ogle the gorgeous Edwardian architecture.
It’s quiet just inside the dark wooden doors, away the from the midday phone conversations and the cafe-bound lunchers on Marylebone High Street. Here, all you can hear are fingers quietly flicking through the pages and the occasional scratch of another potential taken off the shelf.
Daunt Books is the it-destination for travel book junkies, though I first had to stop to adore some of the vintage hardcovers in the fiction section.
211: Browse Daunt Books.
You don’t have to be a bookworm to know that you could easily linger in Daunt Books and not realise that an entire afternoon has passed. Perching here in a stuffed armchair surrounded by books stacked to the oak-supported rafters is a bibliophile’s dream.
And perhaps more than the books, you’ve got to admire Daunt’s looks, from the beautiful stained glass windows upstairs to the enchanting staircase leading down to even more tomes for the traveller.
But it was upstairs what I wanted, the area for the slower explorers, the holiday-at-homers: the impressively expansive London section. That’s where I picked up this gem by Craig Taylor that I’ve been meaning to read as long as it’s been out. The book is a compilation of 80 interviews the author did with a huge variety “Londoners”, that ever-elusive term that I don’t dare yet call myself. Maybe by the end of this project…
Visit: Daunt Books, 83-84 Marylebone Rd, London W1U 4QW. Tube Baker Street.