An enchanting, independent bookshop, with towering shelves, creaking floorboards, and knowledgeable staff offering curated literary treasures since 1957.

One of London’s foremost and best-loved bookshops, John Sandoe Books offers a thoughtful and enticing selection of new books across the humanities, and a range of services that includes quarterly catalogues, mail order, subscriptions and private libraries.

John Sandoe opened his tiny Chelsea shop in 1957 with Félicité Gwynne, sister of the cookery writer Elizabeth David. They now occupy the two adjacent old shops too, with room for some 30,000 titles. Books are everywhere. An old customer, recollecting the shop’s earliest days, said that Sandoe’s had “all the books one could ever hope to find in one place”.