Foyles Taking On The World

By london_euan Last edited 229 months ago
Foyles Taking On The World

foyles.jpgLondon institution Foyles Bookstore on Charing cross road has announced its plans to expand into the global market, but will test the waters with a new London store first.

For those of you that haven’t visited Foyles it's a confusing collection of adjoining departments spread over five floors containing fifty-six specialist subjects and more students than you can shake an interesting collection of second hand knitwear at. Unsurprisingly there's also a whole book devoted to it.

The new store is to be located at the Royal festival Hall, will offer around 30,000 books and a collection of sheet music for sale. This represents what Chairman Christopher Foyle calls a "specialist opportunity" and thankfully not the beginning of a rollout of cookie cutter Borders-lite stores.

Before Londonist was a swanky website about town able to afford brand new books or utilise flash internet facilities, we remember fondly hiding away in the travel section at Foyles furtively copying down cheap hotel details in Barcelona from the overwhelming selection of travel guides, and when we needed a book on the social behaviour of chimpanzees (Chimpanzee Politics - Power and Sex Among Apes by Frans de Waal), Foyles delivered, so good luck to them.

Last Updated 16 February 2005