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December Opening Hours
Monday to Saturday: 9.30am – 7pm
Sunday: 11am – 6pm
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One of London’s foremost and best-loved bookshops, we offer a thoughtful and enticing selection of new books across the humanities,
and a range of services that includes quarterly catalogues, mail order, subscriptions and private libraries.
John Sandoe opened his tiny Chelsea shop in 1957 with Félicité Gwynne, sister of the cookery writer Elizabeth David. We now occupy the two adjacent old shops too, with room for some 30,000 titles. Books are everywhere. An old customer, recollecting the shop’s earliest days, said that Sandoe’s had “all the books one could ever hope to find in one place”: the shop has grown but the ethos remains the same.
This book on the Kenyan-born British studio potter originally accompanied a show at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2019, and soon fell out of print. It must have been popular because it has just been brought back in its third printing. It shows 44 of Odundo's works alongside other vessels, ancient and contemporary, from Africa and see more
£45.00
Two volumes of self-portraits by a rollcall of great artists: the list is astonishing, as are the works themselves. Beautifully and thoughtfully produced, like all volumes on the Ömer Koç collections. Vol 1: A-J: includes works by Milton Avery, Louise Bourgeois, Jean Cocteau, John Craxton, Otto Dix, Raoul Dufy, David Hockney... Vol 2: K-Z: includes see more
£225.00
A truly magnificent and scholarly publication on the paintings of the Ottoman Empire collected over the last three decades by Ömer Koç. Two large hardback volumes in a slipcase, beautifully produced and richly illustrated: Vol 1: British, Maltese and Levantine Artists in the Ömer Koç Collection by Bryony Llewellyn Vol 2: European Artists in the see more
£320.00
This beautifully produced folio catalogue of a small part of Ömer Koç's library focusses on fictional prose and poetry, written mainly by Europeans, in which Constantinople/Istanbul is the locus. With a scholarly text and richly illustrated, the catalogue ranges from Bertrand de la Borderie's C16th poem describing his journey from Marseille to Constantinoble (sic) to see more
£275.00
A second edition of this gloriously absurd book. The first edition, now out of print, recreated the original 1922 Shakespeare and Co. edition in appearance (the particular blue of the cover was painstakingly recreated) and volume; it was a large, bulky thing. Much of that bulk was made up of empty pages, except for two see more
£50.00
£59.00
Crane's illustrations will be familiar to many from childhood: sweet, pre-Raphaelite scenes, hand-drawn lettering with an Arts & Crafts flair for design. These two volumes catalogue almost 450 of the titles for which he produced artwork (over half of which have only been recently unearthed by the author).
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A short, illustrated rumination on the work of Edvard Munch through nineteen paintings and drawings. It's as if we're looking over the acclaimed novelist's shoulder as she looks intently at a sequence of images, guided by her dead mother's voice showing and questioning, Virgil to her Dante. Ideas wreath like smoke. Beautifully published by the see more
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A survey of surviving buildings of post-war British architecture, the manifestation of the then ambitious and hopeful welfare state. A magnificent example of passionate, high-quality self-publishing and an ode to the gritty and optimistic Brutalist canon, it covers housing, schools, theatres, bridges, stations, administrative buildings, universities, churches, shopping malls... Superb photography and excellent essays. Features see more
£45.00
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The special, limited edition is contained in a cloth slip case, and comes with two limited edition prints. Some of these masterful photos look directly at devotion: a woman dances, a sacrificial ram is covered in holi handprints, and prayer flags are swept up in the wind. Others capture quotidian moments — a man feeds see more
£200.00
Some of these masterful photos look directly at devotion: a woman dances, a sacrificial ram is covered in holi handprints, and prayer flags are swept up in the wind. Others capture quotidian moments - a man feeds pigeons, a cockerel crows -- and transcendental possibilities abound. Bound in burnt orange cloth.
£40.00
7/20 of a limited edition of twenty, in a black cloth slip-case. Beautifully bound with bold cover artwork in sumptuous colours. Much of the Llanos, the tropical plain situated east of the Andes in Venezuela, has been devastated to create grazing areas for cattle. Hato Piñero, a nature reserve of 80,00 hectares, has so far see more
£270.00
Much of the Llanos, the tropical plain situated east of the Andes in Venezuela, has been devastated to create grazing areas for cattle. Hato Piñero, a nature reserve of 80,00 hectares, has so far resisted this fate. Its rich forested areas and wetlands are untouched, and its remaining wildlife corridors retain their extraordinary eco-diversity. Cowcher see more
£160.00
A book of black and white photographs of the steep, rugged moorland on a 6,000-acre estate in the Scottish Highlands - Kinloch Hourn - and of the careful management of its herd of red deer. The stalking, gralloching and use of ponies, done by a very small and experienced team, is done in traditional ways. see more
£50.00
Robin Bynoe began collecting Carel Weight's art in 1982, which precipitated a great friendship that was to span the next fifteen years. Acclaimed for his portraits, and his sometimes sinister, often humorous depictions of modern life, this book gives depth to the way Weight is often bracketed off as an English eccentric narrative painter. Bynoe see more
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By pegging her narrative to White's diary entries of 1781, when White was 60 and still seven years short of publishing The Natural History of Selborne, the miraculously sensitive Uglow releases herself and us from mere chronology to wander at will through White's life, habits, observations. Monday September 10th: 'Red-breasts feed on elder-berries, enter rooms see more
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Dimbleby went to Palestine as a reporter in the 1970s with his colleague Don McCullin. Triggered by Golda Meir's statement that Palestinians 'do not exist,' they sought to show that they did, and would continue to. They met lawyers, doctors, students, labourers, politicians, craftsmen, soldiers, diplomats... This is a new edition, fifty years on.
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Following her biographies of Kierkegaard and George Eliot, this is a series of six philosophical meditations on what it means to write about a person's life, whether the singularity of a life (our own included) can be understood through literature or be seen 'under the aspect of eternity'. Carlisle writes with confidence and curiosity about, see more
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The poet, translator and editor of Nemo's Almanac is astonishingly well-read; if books do furnish a room, this man's memory palace will be vast and labyrinthine... With a book habit that began in his childhood, he writes of his queasiness when emptying his shelves at Queen's College, Cambridge, and the incompleteness of living with his see more
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First published in 1936, this endearing Icelandic novella follows the annual wintry trek of an aging shepherd, his dog and a tough old ram to round up any stray livestock and bring them off the snowfields, through storm and darkness, before Yuletide. Simplicity and stoicism are leitmotifs in this reissued classic. Translated from the Danish.
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THE SANDOE’S EXPERIENCE
Knights’ moves and rabbit holes: we hope our website reminds you of your visits to Sandoe’s, where the unexpected and lesser-known rub shoulders with the familiar and canonical.

THE SANDOE’S EXPERIENCE
Knights’ moves and rabbit holes: we hope our website reminds you of your visits to Sandoe’s, where the unexpected and lesser known rub shoulders with the familiar and canonical.
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Issue 4 of Ruth Guilding’s annual bonanza of architecture, interiors and off-beat ways of life celebrates Stanway and Newbiggin, Samuel Palmer and green men, folk art and fashion, the witchy and the Arthurian. Contributors include Charlotte di Carcaci, Luke Edward Hall, Arthur Parkinson, Mark Hearld and Ronald Hutton, the whole washed down with lashings of see more
£20.00
A wickedly funny literary slasher set around Paris's Shakespeare and Co,. in which prominent writers are the victims of a string of assassinations by a mysterious terrorist group. Cameos from Andrew Wylie, Roland Barthes and a merciless who's who of contemporary literary culture. Gore Vidal's adage, every time a friend succeeds, I die a little, see more
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An immense, learned and witty sweep of literature by the editorial director of New York Review Books and the founder of the NYRB Classics series. Frank is terrific company through the century's changing literary moods; it's a telling sign that you end his book not only wanting to read (/re-read) almost all of the twentyish see more
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“I see gardens as works of art made of living entities that change with the seasons and the passing of time”: Marianne Majerus is a leading contemporary photographer of gardens who has worked all over the world and whose work is held in many public and private collections. For this new, elegantly produced publication, the see more
£36.00
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SANDOE’S NOTIFICATIONS
John Sandoe is an integral part of my life in London. It is quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for.
EDNA O’BRIEN


John Sandoe is an integral part of my life in London. It is quite simply the best bookshop anyone could wish for.
EDNA O’BRIEN
























































































