In the anonymity of the high street, a Wandsworth bookshop is thriving with something unique.
Tom Rowley, owner of Backstory of Balham High Street, described his business as an experiment in recreating something old-fashioned – a place where people can meet and talk.
A former journalist, Rowley opened Backstory in 2022 after becoming closer to his neighbours during the Covid-19 pandemic and through its alcohol, coffee, and events always intended it as somewhere to make more than a transaction.
He said: “We’ve lost places of community over the last few decades.
“There was a time when churches, working men’s clubs, even post offices and banks, were places where you would have spontaneous interactions.
“There’s a void at the heart of people’s everyday lives – a lack of interaction.”
The experiment has paid off so far with Backstory being recently named London’s Best Independent Bookshop at the British Book Awards.
“Backstory was my attempt to create a place that people would embrace as a third space,” said Rowley.
A third space refers to there being fewer non-commercial settings in London to go to that are not home or work.
Rowley said – although he loved them – he was not solely fussed about the selling of books.
Among the paperbacks then much of Backstory’s small space is dedicated to seating areas and a long, prominent bar selling coffee and alcohol.
“The bar was always part of our vision,” Rowley said.
“I worked in America and one thing I loved about American restaurants is they often had a long bar where you could just sit and strike up a conversation.
“Travelling in Britain for work I would be seated at a table for one and feel slightly self conscious and awkward, so I loved the idea of having one of these restaurant bars.”
Though 85-90% of Backstory’s revenue comes from book sales, the bar serves as that third space people could come to whether or not they were interested in buying books.
Rowley said: “We see the bar as a way to encourage people to spend more time here.”
At my time there on an early Tuesday afternoon two people worked on their laptops and a mother and her daughter read silently as people milled around – the American bar seems to have served its purpose.
The decline in social spaces in London is not a simple shift from rosy, close communities to commercialised social-media led isolation but nevertheless growing economic pressure on Londoners and businesses has made it increasingly difficult for not explicitly profit-led places to exist.
The problem as Rowley described is this culture struggles to create places people feel are theirs, whatever the expense of going there.
His bookshop’s prosperity came from being “wholly embraced by a community,” he said.
A member of that community in the shop that day who wished to remain unnamed said she came a few times a month to sit and read.
The atmosphere was friendly and calm, she said.
While Backstory remains a business, its current success seems then a straightforward example of giving people what they want.
Featured image: Rowley in his bookshop – picture by Fred Lake
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