Tag Archives: The Book Elephant

The Book Elephant

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Now that it’s fully up and running, we’ve made a return visit to The Book Elephant in Sayer Street. In 2019 we attended a consultation on the street hosted by builder Lendlease. They informed us that Sayer St. would be lined with independent shops such this very bookstore. Well, Joe and the Juice and, god help us, Gail’s Bakery must have nodded off at that point in the presentation because they’ve just rocked up. More on this sad news later.

Owner Tomasz Wrobel has wanted to open a bookshop since her arrived in the UK from Poland 20 years ago. He chose the Elephant due to its rich history, vibrancy, and diversity (flattery will get you everywhere, Tomasz). The shop has a large fiction section, true crime, science, travel, children’s books, LGBT+, and quite a range of left leaning political books. They also sell cards, bookmarks, and book related gifts. They sell tea and coffee and have a small seating area where you can enjoy your new purchase. You can also order books and they arrive in two days. Take that Amazon.

We’ve deduced that the secret trick undertaken by developers like Lendlease and Berkeley is that they initially rent to appealing small businesses and when most of the flats are sold they jack up the rent and before you know it you’re stuck with a megachain bakery. Why this is relevant is that small businesses like The Book Elephant need our trade now more than ever. So you have your mission, dear readers!

The Book Elephant

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Older and more experienced residents of Greater Kennington might recall from the brambles of their hippocampus that for eight years there was a bookshop in Kennington Cross (there was also an Oddbins, but don’t get us started on that trauma). It closed in 2015 and after almost a decade a new bookshop has emerged in the area. It’s called The Book Elephant and is now in soft launch stage in Sayer Street in that oh so trendy new bit of Elephant and Castle. 

At the moment the Book Elephant appears to be a mainstream bookstore with a range of offerings from fiction to children’s books, from reference material to biographies and political books. They also sell paper related things such as cards, notepads and greetings cards. Mostly importantly, they’ve confirmed that you can buy and collect books there if they don’t stock it by ordering on their website.

As we witnessed with the loss of Kennington Bookshop, making independent bookshops viable is extremely difficult and they need all of our support and resources. Because if we don’t support them we might end up with another *bangs head on keyboard* Gails Bakery. And besides, buying books and buying them locally makes you feel doubly virtuous.