Unicorn Bookshop
In 1966 an American named Bill Butler opened Unicorn Bookshop on 50 Gloucester Road, Brighton, possibly the UK's first underground bookshop. He sold anti-war posters, occult and esoterica, liberation politics, and gay imports from the USA and catered for all things underground: posters, hippy beads, bells, US beat poetry magazines and contemporary fiction. The bookshop had an Alsatian dog and was famous for its exterior psychedelic painting by John Upton.
The owner, Bill, wrote poetry and science fiction for many years. He ran Unicorn Press, a small printing service. He produced and wrote the first 21 issues of Attila, a weekly mimeo community paper documenting Brighton’s alternative movement.
The bookshop was involved in a number of controversies with local police for stocking 'obscene' material and Butler was drawn into an expensive legal suit for publishing J G Ballard's Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan in 1968. The bookshop was fined a hefty sum and was in huge amounts of debt.
In the end the shop closed down and the printing press moved with Bill and some friends to a commune in Wales. Bill died on the 21st October 1977 in his flat in Shephard's Bush.
Sources:
Radical Bookshops Listing, Radical Bookshop History Project (November 2023) [Available online here, accessed 14.7.2025]
Ken Worpole, 'Bookshop Stories', Radical Bookselling Newsletter 6, May 2023, ISSN 2752-3977 [https://www.leftontheshelfbooks.co.uk/pdf/Radical-Bookselling-History-Newsletter-Issue-6-May-2023.pdf, accessed 14.07.2025]
Discover Brighton website [https://queensparkbooks.org.uk/discover-brighton/6-the-unicorn-bookshop/, accessed 14.07.2025]
Lisa Redlinski, 'Attila, Bill Butler and Unicorn Bookshop', Radical Brighton [https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/radicalpress/2016/10/17/bill-butler-and-unicorn-bookshop/, accessed 14.07.2025]
Kriya Arts website [http://kriyaarts.co.uk/unicorn-bookshop-mural, accessed 14.07.2025]
