Literary London: events and activities for book-lovers

Tucked away in London’s gothic masterpiece, Westminster Abbey, you’ll find all the big dogs of literature immortalised in marble and bronze. Check out Shakespeare doing a casual ‘best playwright ever’ lean, accompanied by lines from ‘The Tempest’. Then there’s Matthew Arnold with hefty stone chops, a creepy bust of William Blake, a whimsical quote on Lewis Carroll’s memorial and a very Christian one for CS Lewis.

This tech-free bookshop is so into printed words on physical pages that mobile phones are actually banned. 'Techpreneur' - and former special advisor to David Cameron - Rohan Silva founded the analogue bookshop as a reaction against digital distractions. The design is fun - shelves designed by Slade School artists, a whisky bar for events and a printing press downstairs.

Why splash out on a walking tour when you could be in the pub? Drink with the spirits of George Orwell, Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan in the boozers of central London: Orwell based the prole pub in ‘1984’ on The Newman Arms, while the Welsh and Irish poets patronised The French House. Legend has it that Thomas drunkenly left his ‘Under Milk Wood’ manuscript in the Soho favourite one night, which makes abandoning your laptop in a taxi seem trivial.

Raided by the police in 1984 and attacked on several occasions (including during the 2011 riots), this bookshop is still the UK’s most radical. Check out its appearance in Bafta-winning film ‘Pride’ for more of its history.

This leafy graveyard is a great place to add to your dead poets’ society. People have been making visits since as far back as 1867. Forget Highgate and Nunhead for cemetery kudos: William Blake is buried here, as is Daniel Defoe (‘Robinson Crusoe’) and John Bunyan (‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’). Blake’s headstone always seems to have fresh flowers in front of it – testament to the fact that his poetry’s still alive and kicking.

This is Bloomsbury’s home to a humble monument for the first person from outside Europe (well, technically apart from Rudyard Kipling) to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Bengali poet Tagore studied at UCL and was instrumental in opening the West to new writing, especially from Indian authors and poets. A short walk away, you can also find a bust of Virginia Woolf, who lived in and often wrote about this area of London.

Want to do some reading beyond the dusty old farts in Poet’s Corner? This is for you. More than 5,000 books from 1900 to now, including 500 books of poetry, collected over 40 years are available for Londoners curious about gender, sexuality and the history of equal rights in the UK. Visit on Saturday afternoons for coffee, cake and stacks of women’s literature.

Word nerds, book a date with yourself this weekend. If you haven’t yet been to the Poetry Library, then you have missed out on 200,000 poetry, magazines and critical studies all in one quiet, welcoming library. Open till 8pm every day except Monday, it also offers free poetry editing. Get away from it all – or, if you like, get back to what you love.

These gorgeous libraries have a lot more to offer than just reading material. Come in and explore (quietly).