Oxford named UK’s literary capital by Time Out magazine

The city of Oxford has emerged as the UK’s best city for bookshops.

A whopping 60 percent of their survey respondents said Oxford’s literary scene is either ‘good’ or ‘amazing’. 

Oxford is the birthplace of Blackwell’s, an academic bookseller that now has 18 branches across the country.

Blackwell’s opened in Broad Street in 1879 and is now considered a landmark of the city.

Its famous Norrington Room is the single largest room selling books in the world, with 5km worth of shelving holding more than 160,000 volumes. 

Barker & Co Booksellers (Image: Andy Ffrench)

A new secondhand bookshop has recently opened in Oxford city centre.

Scott Moynihan, his partner Sumner Braund, Mehdi Bensenane and his partner Helen Flatley have opened Barker & Co Booksellers at Golden Cross, off Cornmarket, which also features a Pizza Express and other shops and a cafe.

That’s far from the only place you can browse books in Oxford, though.

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The Time Out awards also highlight Gulp Fiction, Arcadia, and Daunt Books in Summertown as other bookshops central to the crowning of Oxford as the book capital.

As for the rest of the city’s cultural offerings, the survey revealed 77 per cent of locals said that it’s great for art, 69 percent agreed that it’s good for movies and 76 per cent said it was historic.

Findings from the South Western Railway research has also revealed that the most popular genre for stories set in Oxford is fantasy, such as Pullman’s The Golden Compass or Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches.