19 Facts About Housmans

Housmans is one of the longest-running radical bookshops in the UK.

Housmans was founded by a collective of pacifists in 1945 and has been based in Kings Cross, London since 1959.

Housmans is managed by a trust and is a National Living Wage employer.

Regular live events are hosted at Housmans including panels, book readings, and musical performances.

Housmans' origins began in the 1930s with key players in the British peace movement connected to the pacifist organisation Peace Pledge Union and one of its projects: the pacifist magazine Peace News.

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Name of Housmans was given to the bookshop in Laurence Housman's honour and its cofounders include staff and sponsors of the Peace Pledge Union and Peace News.

Original Housmans bookshop was located at 124 Shaftesbury Avenue, London and opened for business on 26 October 1945.

Housmans continued to trade as a mail-order bookselling business and lacked physical premises until 1958.

Housmans' address had received a threatening letter three months before the explosion.

Housmans had alerted the police of this threat, but the police did not investigate until after the letter bomb had exploded at the bookshop.

Housmans has a long affiliation with the gay liberation movement whilst its cofounder, Laurence Housman, was openly homosexual.

Housmans did not take legal action, but joined a campaign of resistance launched by the Federation of Radical Booksellers to resist the raids and prosecution of booksellers.

In 2016, Housmans expanded its premises with a basement area dubbed 'The Vaults'.

Newly expanded sections in the original upstairs area of Housmans include titles on anti-racism, health and disability politics, and Irish history.

Housmans's father was involved in the Committee of 100 and Hardy was involved in anarchist groups and the Gay Liberation Front.

Housmans was part of a whole liberation, anarcho-pacifist socialist movement.

Housmans is one of many radical bookshops that have been a target of police surveillance and the attendance of officers who purchase material to monitor left-wing groups and individuals.

The plaque above Housmans reads, "Peace, Environmental and Animal Rights Campaigns meeting here were spied on by undercover police officers from the Special Demonstration Squad, and other units".

In May 2016, Housmans sold the private library of cultural theorist Professor Stuart Hall.