‘I’m not going to lie to you, this was a bookshop that was hard to find.
I knew where it should be but that little blue dot on Google Maps kept showing that I had passed it. I walked up and down Maxwell Place looking at the shops comparing my location with the little pin in my Google Maps, increasingly confused, until I saw it, the little sign beneath the ground floor window and the gated stair that led down into the basement shop.
Stirling Books is a secondhand and antiquarian bookshop situated in the heart of Stirling, conveniently located down the hill from the castle and a few hundred yards from the railway station.
I’m so glad I persevered, for Stirling Books is a proper secondhand bookshop with that secondhand bookshop smell that all booklovers know and love. Also, making a virtue of it’s basement location, there is no bookshelf space lost to window displays. What you do get, in this twice winner of Bookshop of the Year, is up to 10,000 books and a shop that regularly hosts author evenings and book clubs.
Stocking a wide range of genres, they seem to feature Scottish, religious, and philosophical and historical books. If you are after the true booklover experience this is a basement to lose yourself in.
Hidden away beneath a photographers and a solicitors, this is a secret little bookshop, and a hidden gem in the historic heart of Scotland.’