| | |
| Drawing by Robert Kennard in 1930 | |
| Company type | Retail bookshop |
|---|---|
| Industry | Book seller |
| Founded | 1835 |
| Founder | Joseph Thornton (1808–1891) |
| Defunct | 2002 |
| Headquarters | 11 Broad Street, , |
Thornton's Bookshop (locally known as Thornton's) was the oldest university bookshop in Oxford, England. [1] [2] It was founded in 1835 by Joseph Thornton (1808–1891) in Magdalen Street. [3]
From 1870, the bookshop was located at 11 Broad Street (opposite Balliol College), continued as a family business by five generations of the Thornton family [4] and from 1983 by the Meeuws family, but closed at the end of 2002. [3] The shop premises on Broad Street were frequently used for television adaptations like the final Inspector Morse episode, The Remorseful Day . [5]
Oxford is a cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. Founded in the 8th century, it was granted city status in 1542. The city is located at the confluence of the rivers Thames and Cherwell. It had a population of 163,257 in 2022. It is 56 miles (90 km) north-west of London, 64 miles (103 km) south-east of Birmingham and 61 miles (98 km) north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world; it has buildings in every style of English architecture since late Anglo-Saxon. Oxford's industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing, science, and information technologies.
John Edward Thaw was an English actor in television, stage and cinema, best known for his starring roles in the television series Inspector Morse as Detective Chief Inspector Endeavour Morse and in The Sweeney as Detective Inspector Jack Regan.
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus, which then merges into Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direction of Charing Cross at the south side of Trafalgar Square. It connects via St Martin's Place and the motorised east side of the square.
South Oxfordshire is a local government district in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, England. Its council is temporarily based outside the district at Abingdon-on-Thames pending a planned move to Didcot, the district's largest town. The areas located south of the River Thames are within the historic county of Berkshire.
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service owned by Waterstones. It was founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named, on Broad Street, Oxford. The brand now has a chain of 18 shops, and an accounts and library supply service. It employs around 1000 staff in its divisions.
Hatchards is an English bookshop claiming to be the oldest in the United Kingdom, founded on Piccadilly in 1797 by John Hatchard. After one move, it has been at the same location on Piccadilly next to Fortnum & Mason since 1801, and the two stores are also neighbours in St. Pancras railway station as of 2014. It has a reputation for attracting high-profile authors and holds three royal warrants granted by King Charles III, Queen Elizabeth II, and Prince Philip respectively.
Oxford East is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2017 by Anneliese Dodds of the Labour Party, who also serves as party chair.
Indica Gallery was a counterculture art gallery in Mason's Yard, St James's, London from 1965 to 1967, in the basement of the Indica Bookshop. John Dunbar, Peter Asher, and Barry Miles owned it, and Paul McCartney supported it and hosted a show of Yoko Ono's work in November 1966, at which Ono met John Lennon.
Turl Street is a historic street in central Oxford, England.
Merton Street tennis court is the home of the Oxford University Real Tennis Club. It stands on the north side of Merton Street in central Oxford, England, and forms part of Merton College.

Broad Street is a wide street in central Oxford, England, just north of the former city wall. The street is known for its bookshops, including the original Blackwell's bookshop at number 50, located here due to the University of Oxford. Among residents, the street is traditionally known as The Broad. On the street is a memorial paving for the Oxford Martyrs.
The Randolph Hotel, also known as The Randolph Hotel by Graduate Hotels, is a 5 star hotel in Oxford, England, on the south side of Beaumont Street, at the corner with Magdalen Street, opposite the Ashmolean Museum and close to the Oxford Playhouse. The hotel building is in the Victorian Gothic style.
Magdalen Street is a short shopping street in central Oxford, England, just north of the original north gate in the city walls. Traditionally, the name of the street is pronounced and not as the name of the Magdalen College, which is always.
Boswells of Oxford was the largest independent family-run department store in Oxford, England. The store first traded in 1738 and was the second oldest family-owned department store in the world. It closed in 2020. The company did not use an apostrophe in its name, although others sometimes mistakenly do so.
Joseph Thornton was a bookseller who founded Thornton's Bookshop in 1835 in Oxford, England, the oldest university bookshop in the city.
Gay's the Word is an independent bookshop in central London, and the oldest LGBT bookshop in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the emergence and growth of lesbian and gay bookstores in the United States, a small group of people from Gay Icebreakers, a gay socialist group, founded the store in 1979. These included Peter Dorey, Ernest Hole and Jonathan Cutbill. Various locations were looked at, including Covent Garden, which was then being regenerated, before they decided to open the store in Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, an area of the capital with rich academic and literary associations. Initial reluctance from Camden Council to grant a lease was overcome with help from Ken Livingstone, then a local councillor, later Mayor of London. For a period of time, it was the only LGBT bookshop in England.
New Beacon Books is a British publishing house, bookshop, and international book service that specializes in Black British, Caribbean, African, African-American and Asian literature. Founded in 1966 by John La Rose and Sarah White, it was the first Caribbean publishing house in England. New Beacon Books is widely recognized as having played an important role in the Caribbean Artists Movement, and in Black British culture more generally. The associated George Padmore Institute (GPI) is located on the upper floors of the same building where the bookshop resides at 76 Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park, London.
Canal Street is a residential street in Jericho, an inner suburb of Oxford, England, northwest of the city centre.
The Weston Library is part of the Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, reopened within the former New Bodleian Library building on the corner of Broad Street and Parks Road in central Oxford, England.
51°45′15″N1°15′28″W / 51.754218°N 1.257658°W