Gay's the Word

Gay's the Word opened at 66 Marchmont Street, Bloomsbury, in January 1979 as the UK's first dedicated LGBTQ+ bookshop. Its founders, Ernest Hole and Peter Dorey, modelled it explicitly on New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, opened twelve years earlier. It has operated continuously from the same premises for 46 years and is the oldest LGBTQ+ bookshop in Britain. In April 1984, HM Customs & Excise raided the shop under Operation Tiger, seizing £11,000 of stock on grounds that imported queer-themed literature — including work by Christopher Isherwood, Kate Millett, and Gore Vidal — was obscene. The prosecution collapsed in 1986; the raid itself, and the fundraising campaign that saved the shop, marked a turning point in British LGBTQ+ political organisation. Gay's the Word is also the physical home of the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign — the shop was LGSM's meeting place through 1984-5, when the miners' strike ran and the campaign raised over £22,000 for the mining communities. The story was dramatised as the 2014 Matthew Warchus film *Pride*; several of the film's scenes were filmed inside the shop, with LGSM veterans as extras. Still an operating independent bookshop today. Open Monday-Saturday 10:00-18:30, Sunday 14:00-18:00. The specialisms are queer fiction, trans and non-binary writing, LGBTQ+ theory, and children's books; the front-window display changes weekly. Russell Square Underground is three minutes' walk. Free entry; the shop itself is the exhibit.