Charring Cross Road

Charing Cross Road must be the home to almost every bookshop in London.

In fact there's even a book about one of its bookshops - 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff.

It runs immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles' Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes Tottenham Court Road. It is so called because it serves Charing Cross railway station (named for the nearby Charing Cross).

Charing Cross Road is renowned for its specialist and second-hand bookshops. The section from Leicester Square tube station to Cambridge Circus is home to specialist shops such as Zwemmer's (art books), and more general second-hand and antiquarian shops such as Quinto Bookshop, Henry Pordes and Any Amount of Books.

The northern section between Cambridge Circus and Oxford Street includes more generalist bookshops such as the venerable Foyles, Borders and Blackwell's.

An interesting local feature can be found in the middle of Charing Cross Road at its junction with Old Compton Street. Beneath the grille in the traffic island in the middle of the road, the old road signs for the now-vanished Little Compton Street can be seen.