Daunt Books Marylebone
The most beautiful bookshop in London, free to wander, an Edwardian gallery of oak balconies and a long stained-glass skylight where the travel books are shelved by country.
The lowdown
Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street is often called the most beautiful bookshop in the world, and walking in costs nothing. Built in 1910 as one of the first purpose-built bookshops, its long back room is a galleried hall of oak shelves and balconies under a graceful arched skylight.
Its signature is the travel section that fills that back room, where the books are arranged by country rather than by type, so guidebooks, novels, history and maps for a place all sit together. It turns browsing into a kind of armchair journey, and you are welcome to linger as long as you like.
It is a working independent bookshop, not a museum, so there is no charge and no fuss, just one of the loveliest rooms in London that happens to be full of books. A free and quietly civilised half hour off the Marylebone shopping streets.
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