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.