Five Leaves Bookshop keeps Nottingham's independent book scene thriving

Down an alleyway opposite the Tourist Information Centre, a minute from Nottingham's Market Square, is one of the city's best-loved independent shops. Five Leaves Bookshop opened at 14a Long Row in November 2013 and describes itself as one of the few independents to open in any UK city centre this century.

The alley has history of its own, having once been home to the headquarters of the Universal Suffrage Association. The shop is fully independent, does its own buying and has no shareholders, and it has paid its staff the Living Wage since shortly after it opened.

The bookshop grew out of Five Leaves Publications, set up in the mid-1990s, which has published around 200 titles. Bookselling is now the company's main activity, but publishing carries on.

Its shelves reflect its interests: cityscape and landscape, politics, fiction and poetry, LGBTQ+ writing, international writing and local studies, alongside a Black Writing and Black Lives section and a children's range with a focus on diversity.

The awards have followed. Five Leaves was named national Independent Bookshop of the Year at the British Book Awards in 2018, won the Midlands section in 2018, 2019 and 2021, and was a regional finalist nine years running. It also received the Nottingham Rainbow Heritage Award in 2019 and the Nottingham Windrush Award in 2022.

Events are at the heart of what it does, with more than 5,000 people attending each year. The shop has launched Feminist Book Fortnight nationally, hosted the first Nottingham Radical Bookfair in 2017, and one of its staff wrote Nottingham's successful bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature.

This autumn's programme shows its range. Queer Sundays brings tea, cake and talks every Sunday in October, book groups meet regularly, and the Caribbean Pioneer Gardeners exhibition at Beeston Library, running until 4 November 2026, tells the story of six Windrush generation gardeners at Hungerhill Gardens in St Ann's.

Book groups are open to all, and the events calendar and online shop can be found on the Five Leaves Bookshop website.