European Holiday 2025, London, England - Part 2

While still sitting in the departure area of Heathrow Airport I've decided to break this blog post on London into two parts because it's turning out to be so large.  This second part concentrates on my wife and I book hunting in London, and book stores we encountered that did NOT have Ian Fleming - Jonathan Cape hardbacks for sale.  All the Capes we did encounter feature in my previous post.

While at Piccadilly Circus, and the Hatchards book store nearby mentioned previously, we visited the massive Waterstones store.  They had heaps of new James Bond paperbacks including the recent hardbacks from Ian Fleming Publications.  These hardbacks were only released in the last few years and this was my first opportunity to physically hold them.  They were very nice however I decided not to pull out my credit card.  It was a tough decision though.

We also visited another Waterstones store near our hotel in Covent Garden.  Not as big as their Piccadilly store but they still had lots of great new books.

We also made it to the book store Any Amount Of Books.  I remember visiting this store on a previous trip to London around 2007.  A great two storey secondhand store with lots of quality books to peruse.

Foyles on Charing Cross also featured in our book hunt.  What a huge, and magnificent, book store it is.  My wife purchased some humerous greeting cards while we were there.

Also we visited an Oxfam store near SoHo where they were selling hardback copies of Kim Sherwood's "A Spy Like Me" for £5 each.  These books were published by William Morrow in the US, and as I'd only previously acquired a UK published edition of this hardback at a more expensive price, I was compelled to purchase one.  

We travelled to Notting Hill too.  Not only did we see the blue door from the film of the same name and plenty of pastel coloured houses, we also visited two book stores.

This was The Notting Hill Bookshop.  We wondered if this book store doubled as the travel book store from the film.  It was a nice little store choc-a-block with potential customers.

Another bookstore in Notting Hill, Daunt Books, where the owners were very friendly and welcoming.  They had lots of great new books including the Ian Fleming - James Bond novels below.

Some final photos of London:

View from the Sky Garden

Big Ben

The London Eye by the Thames

Double decker bus