Outside Stanfords at 12-14 Long Acre, London. March 30, 2014. Just a short walk from Covent Garden.
I had been looking forward to visiting the famous travel shop near London’s Covent Garden with much expectation and anticipation. From everything that I had read about the place it appeared to be a kind of mecca for travelers. I’m happy to report that when I was in London a couple of weeks ago I was not disappointed by “the world’s largest map and travel bookshop”!
This store is located near Covent Garden, an old market square that these days caters mostly to tourists and so is usually quite crowded, but it is still a fun area to visit. This was one of my favorite places to visit when I was a student in the 1980s. It is close to the Opera House, the London Museum of Transport, and an abundance of cafés and restaurants. Covent Garden is well known for live street performances by artists, actors and musicians. Indeed, during our visit we enjoyed some live operatic singing in the covered market area, and there were mime artists pretending to be statues close to the Opera House. Stanfords is located at 12-14 Long Acre (WC2). The Covent Garden tube station is closest to the store, but this was closed when I went there with my family, so we took the train to the Leicester Square station instead, which required a walk of about 10 minutes (the traffic conditions were quite heavy and it took a while to cross the road) to reach the store.
Stanfords first opened its Long Acre store in 1901 and according to the store’s website has been visited by such famous travelers as Captain Robert Scott, Ernest Shackelton, Florence Nightingale, Michael Palin, Bill Bryson and Ranulph Fiennes. The history of Stanfords reaches back to 1853 when Edward Stanford first established his business. This history is published in detail on the store’s website.
I really enjoyed my visit to Stanfords. I was mainly interested in finding a “Blue Guide” for Amsterdam as well as travel writing related to Arabia. I found a copy of T.E. Lawrence’s Revolt in the Desert, which I bought mainly for its descriptions of the Bedouin and life in the desert, and an insideout® guide to Amsterdam, which included a useful map of the center of the city and brief descriptions of sites of interest. I also picked up a copy of a 1937 map that shows where the British primarily got their tea from in the early twentieth century (India, Ceylon [Sri Lanka] and Indonesia), which I thought would be a colorful item to frame and hang on the wall in our home. I remember there being three floors, with travel writing in the basement, local history on the ground floor, with a café at the back, and maps and destination guides on the top floor. This is my memory of the store through the prism of my own interests, but of course the store sells a huge variety of travel related items that I will not mention here. Unfortunately, they did not have the Blue Guide I wanted in stock. An employee offered to order it for me, but since we were visiting London for only a couple of days, I had to decline. Anyway, all in all it was very worthwhile visiting this store. If I lived in London I would be a frequent user.
Another nicely written account, which really encourages the reader to visit and to share in the experience.