Mushroom Bookshop
Mushroom Bookshop was established in 1972. It was a collectively run radical bookshop with a strong anarchist and pacifist history. It supplied numerous libraries and published peace movement pamphlets, such as The Anti-Nuclear Songbook in the mid-1980s.
Mushroom Book Events was formed by a group of women to organise the annual Feminist Book Fortnight and promoted contemporary women's writing, including poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.
It was a hub for organising protests against the Falklands and Iraq Wars. Its yellow van adorned with feminist, anarchist, and CND signs was used during protests and to deliver books to university and school libraries.
The bookshop faced threats and endured a fascist attack in 1994, following years of what Ross Bradshaw describes as 'low level harassment'. Mushroom Bookshop was also raided by police under the Obscene Publications Act and the Misuse of Drugs Act, with all their books on drugs, and one on female masturbation, confiscated. The bookshop took a case against the police to challenge this, and won the return of nearly all their books.
Key members of the collective included Keith Leonard, Chris Cook, Tom Wilson, Sue Mather, Ross Bradshaw (who later founded Five Leaves Publications), Kate Marsden, Hilary Trengrouse, and Mo Cumming.
Despite its success, Mushroom Bookshop closed its doors in the year 2000 due to financial difficulties.
Its legacy carries on through Fives Leaves Bookshop.
Sources:
Ross Bradshaw, 'Trouble at Mushroom', Radical Bookselling History Newsletter, Issue 3, October 2021, ISSN 2752-3977
Kate Marsden, 'Mushroom Book Events Remembered', Radical Bookselling History Newsletter, Issue 4, May 2022, ISSN 2752-3977
Thomas Fair, 'The lost radical bookshop that was raided by skinheads and police', Nottinghamshire Live, 28.11.2021 [online, https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/history/lost-radical-bookshop-raided-skinheads-6226611, accessed 23.06.2025]
The Radical Bookseller, No. 19, Nov/Dec 1982; No. 27, October/November 1983; No. 58, Feb/March 1988; No. 76, Winter 1991; No. 77, Spring 1991
Radical Bookshops Listing, Radical Bookshop History Project (November 2023) [Available online here, accessed 23.06.2025]
