Compendium Books
Compendium Books was an independent, counterculture bookshop in London, founded by Diana Gravill and Nicholas Rochford. It opened at 240 Camden High Street in 1968, with an additional location at 281 Camden High Street from 1972.
Compendium was a central venue for the British Poetry Revival and made post-1968 political and cultural theory texts available. According to Compendium's Wikipedia entry, The Guardian's John Williams described it as 'Britain's pre-eminent radical bookstore.'
Compendium Books offered 75,000 titles and provided services such as mail order, library supply, and immediate access to all departments by phone.
There were books on subjects such as anarchism, drugs, poststructuralism, feminism, Buddhism. It also had a large music section, featuring many imported US titles of blues, soul, jazz, and rock and roll.
The shop at 281 Camden High Street focused on humanistic psychology and esoteric books, later known as the 'mind, body, spirit' section. The bookshop issued booklists on Therapy and Creativity, Postmodernism, and AIDS and HIV.
Financial difficulties eventually led to the consolidation of the shop at 234 Camden High Street.
Compendium also faced legal challenges, including being fined over £2,000 for selling copies of a bootleg edition of Spycatcher in 1987.
Despite its popularity, the bookshop closed at the turn of the century due to changes in the bookselling environment such as the Net Book Agreement.
Sources:
Radical Bookshops Listing, Radical Bookshop History Project (November 2023) [Available online here, accessed 13.05.2025]
Compendium Books Wikipedia entry
The Radical Bookseller, No. 55, Sept/Oct 1987
The Radical Bookseller, Issue 75, 1991
