Housmans radical booksellers since 1945

NOTE: We have our usual eclectic range of topical book-related meetings in the shop this month. Check our events page for the latest news.

Welcome to the website of London's premier radical bookshop!

Housmans specialises in books and periodicals of radical interest and progressive politics.

Our stock includes:

• Wide coverage of politics, political and social theories, peace issues, and world affairs.
• Material about - and in support of - campaigns for peace, the environment, human rights, sexual freedom, equitable and sustainable development, and a great deal more.
• Selected fiction - including London writing, cult novels, and books with political and social themes - and a certain amount of less political non-fiction.
• Many hard-to-find radical publications - and we can obtain most books to order within a few days.

Our standard opening times are Monday to Friday 10am to 6.30pm, and Saturday 10am to 6pm; we're normally closed on Sundays and most official holidays.

Student discounts: We now offer a 10% discount to students, with appropriate identification, on almost everything in the shop - including stationery. See the Books page for fuller details of this offer.

For more details of our range of stock, and of the services we offer, please see the Books and Booklists sections of this website. And please note that most sections of our radical book stock are supplemented by a large assortment of pamphlets.

Housmans publishes an annual Peace Diary, including a unique World Peace Directory. Copies sent direct from Housmans will be supplied post free to any address in the world.

We also have t-shirts, an exciting and unusual range of greetings cards and postcards, as well as postage stamps, badges, an ever-changing selection of posters, diaries, fair trade coffee (and now tea as well), and a wide-ranging stationery department.

And we have the largest range of radical newsletters, newspapers and magazines of any shop in Britain - with editions of well over 200 different titles regularly in stock (and many others irregularly). These publications represent a vast diversity of (and within!) peace campaigns, left movements and parties, civil rights groups, environmental organisations, sexual freedom campaigns, secularist groups, anarchist networks, third world campaigns, alternative lifestyle movements, anti-globalisation and anti-capitalist groups, solidarity campaigns ... and much else.

We are committed to protecting the environment, and recycle where possible. So when you buy your printer cartridges from our stationery section (or even if you don't!), we are happy to take your used cartridges and to get them recycled - so if you have any, drop them in to the shop.

Please visit us if you can - we're at 5 Caledonian Road, Kings Cross, London N1 (tel 020-7837 4473). The shop is within one block of 6 of the 11 London Underground lines (Kings Cross / St Pancras station), as well as being convenient for countless bus routes and several main line railway stations - including St Pancras, with its direct services from mainland Europe (see Contact page for map and directions).

Access: Most of Housmans Bookshop has level access from the street, but one section is up two steps. Housmans staff are happy to provide whatever help they can to anyone who has difficulty negotiating the steps.

Our basement is home to Porcupine second-hand books - specialists in Philosophy, Politics, History and Psychology.

Besides housing London's oldest independent political bookshop, our historic building in Caledonian Road is also home to our sibling company, the pacifist monthly Peace News, along with War Resisters' International and other peace and radical organisations.

We have regular events in the shop - see the events page. For details of Anne Aylor's creative writing course please see www.anneaylor.co.uk

The World Peace Directory, included in the Housmans Peace Diary each year, includes contact details of almost 2000 national and international peace, green, and human rights organisations around the world. (For more details of the full World Peace Database, from which the directory in the Peace Diary is taken, please contact the Housmans Peace Resource Project - e-mail worldpeace@gn.apc.org.)

We produce a monthly Newsletter, if you would like it e-mailed to you please contact nik@housmans.com.

Orders can be placed on this website via paypal (if you have a credit, debit, or charge card). Also, if you can't come into the shop in person, we are happy to accept orders by post, phone, fax, or e-mail (orders@housmans.com). See the Books page for details.

Volunteers: Housmans welcomes intelligent, reliable and enthusiastic volunteers with relevant skills, to help in its work. Which skills are "relevant" changes over time, but we can often use fairly routine help in and around the shop itself, or on bookstalls at events; we sometimes need technical computer skills, or help with the production of publications. In return there are occasional perks, and the chance to improve your own skills and experience - not to mention the satisfaction of supporting the last major non-sectarian radical bookshop in London.

Our standard opening times are Monday to Friday 10am to 6.30pm, and Saturday 10am to 6pm; we're normally closed on Sundays and most official holidays. But we often have extra opening hours for special events - or just because we're able to - so ring us to check if you ever want to visit outside our "official" times.

Please note that we welcome donations to support the work of Housmans. Trying to promote and supply peace movement and other varieties of radical literature is not the most commercially viable activity - and that's even without taking into account the notoriously unfair competition that all small independent shops face from the major high street bookshop chains. To support our work, you can click below and use your credit/debit/charge card, or you can send us a cheque made payable to Housmans. We also welcome donations of any of your unwanted books - we can often find them a home with a new generation of activists (and raise a little money for the shop at the same time).