Finding Orwell and Booklovers’ Corner in South End Green

Posted: January 26th, 2026 | No Comments »

Right alongside the modernist artists, architects and sculptors who lived in interwar Belsize Park was George Orwell…

In 1934 Orwell had already published Down and Out in Paris and London and his first novel, A Clergyman’s Daughter, as well as a memoir, Burmese Days. He then moved to Hampstead and got a job as a part-time assistant in Booklovers’ Corner, a

second-hand bookshop in South End Green run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope. Today that bookshop is a Gail’s Bakery though a plaque has been erected as well as a sculpture of Orwell on the front of the building. He worked there for fifteen

months until the end of January 1936 with many of his experiences as a bookseller appearing in his 1936 novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Booklovers’ Corner is a stop on my VoiceMap Historical Hampstead’s “Gentle Nest of Artists”: A Belsize Park Walk.

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