The Credentials
After 100 years of continuous service to the public we (in all probability), have to be the oldest surviving bookshop in the world specifically specialising in the Occult & the Mystical - also known as esoterica, mind body &spirit, new age, metaphysics and related subjects. We have always prided ourselves, with some modesty, on the scope and profundity of the material we stock and on the breadth and depth of the knowledge & service offered by our staff.

And not just the oldest but also one of the three largest bookshops in the whole world specialising in this field. Our customers come from all across the world; from across the social, ethnic, religious, economic and linguistic spectra, there is no bias.

The Beginning
Over a century ago, Watkins, the "University of Rejected Sciences", was born. In April 1897, John M. Watkins issued the first second-hand and remaindered book
catalogue in his own name, giving 26 Charing Cross in the centre of London as his business address. Since 1895, perhaps earlier, he had published similar lists on behalf of "The Theosophical Publishing Society', initially from 7/8 Duke Street,' Adelphi, later from Charing Cross and then from "... a shop near the Friends' Meeting House in St. Martin's Lane." These lists had been preceded by Book-notes, which he had edited from March 1893. The premises of this profitable business would shift location from nautical Whitehall to thespian St.Martin’s Lane.

John Watkins eventually moved the business to its present famous site in No.21 in Cecil Court in 1901. Two frequent visitors in those very early days were the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, himself a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and G. R. S. Mead, author of numerous works on gnosticism and a prominent figure in the Theosophical Society.

J. Watkins himself introduced our famous Egyptian logo that depicts the Great God Thoth, ancient deity of learning, writing, science and magic. He has been affectionately called the "scribe of the gods" by the bookshop' s staff of every epoch, and can be seen today adorning the creaking sign outside – but way back in 1901 the shop had only begun its tradition as a London nexus, a Mecca for occultists and mystics from all over the world - people from all walks of life.

The Early Intellectual Environment
The Watkins story starts in the innovative intellectual ferment of Victorian London. For many people the 'Victorian Age' evokes images of steaming industrial and smoky commercial power, iron & funerals, reminiscent of Blake's 'Satanic Mills', moral evangelical conservatism and starch-collared high mindedness although as history begins to peel off the onion layers it seems that it may not all have been as 'moral' and 'high' as some of us were taught at school.

The hustle & bustle of the West End in this heyday was that of packed-out multicoloured omnibuses and tipped hats, the ringing cries of the newspaper boys echoing and the scuffling barrow boys of the busy Covent Garden markets rumbling forward the quality market centre of the huge British Empire. The rich mixing scents of soot, horse manure, perfumed blooms of flowers downwind, open bakeries and the gas lamps filled the air.

The late 19th century was a time of vigorous questioning of long-held beliefs about the nature of man, his origins and his destiny as well as of the universe, which he inhabited. All these developments were to have a considerable impact on the thinking of many intellectuals preoccupied with spiritual and metaphysical questions.
Amidst this intellectual upheaval there arose several organisations putting forward alternative views of man and his spiritual nature. There was an upsurge of interest in the hermetic and kabbalistic traditions, an impulse that lay behind the formation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Additionally the new interest in the
spiritual and metaphysical culture of Asia was to find an outlet in the founding of H.P.Blavatsky's Theosophical Society in America, Britain and India. Thirdly, there was the phenomenon of the appearance of mediumship, and the possibility of establishing the fact of personal survival after death. This last resulted in the establishment of the Society for Psychical Research as well as the growth of the Spiritualist movement.

John Watkins
It is into this concentrated context that we may view the establishment of Watkins Bookshop in the mid 1890's. John Maurice Watkins, the founder of this bookshop, was a friend and disciple of H P. Blavatsky and was himself personally involved in seeing the first edition of The Secret Doctrine, her great metaphysical classic, through the press.
The ideal of founding the bookshop is said to have occurred to Mr Watkins in a conversation with Madame Blavatsky in which she lamented the fact that there was nowhere in London one could buy books on mysticism, occultism and metaphysics.

Watkins was joined by his son Geoffrey in 1919. John M. Watkins died on the 19th August in 1947, venerably aged 85.

Geoffrey
As a child Geoffrey met many of the leading occult figures of the time; MacGregor Mathers, W.B.Yeats, George Russell, Aleister Crowley, all visited the shop and A.E.Waite was a lifelong friend of Geoffrey Watkins, as were many other occult authors. His schooldays were spent in Heidelberg, and when he returned to England he was fluent in German. He planned to become a lawyer but the turmoil in Europe that resulted in the Great War thrust him into service. He was commissioned into British Military Intelligence in 1914 and was 'kept busy in that field' until 1919. He may have even aided the wily Crowley on his hilarious anti-German propaganda commissions from the Royal Navy Admiralty, just down the road.

By this time John Watkins was quite shortsighted, and could no longer cope with the burden of the shop alone. The vibrant Jazz Age had come to Britain, and tastes for the obscure and eldritch were fully catered for in Cecil Court. This was the art deco era of sanity-blasting investigations and brave exploration into the supernatural Unknown, as mystically inclined detectives in fact and fiction plied their way into the Orient Express epoch of high mystery and two-fisted adventure. In a time of newly minted airlines and sumptuous liners carrying the psychologically curious to all four corners of the Globe, the thirst for unorthodox explanations and numinous revelation expanded.

The gathering storm-heads of a new war had taken a far darker turn by the late Thirties, and Geoffrey was drawn quickly back into the shadow-world of Intelligence fieldwork again in 1939. He worked in a senior capacity for the 'Postal and telegraph Censorship Department', and eventually wrote its official history. During the terrifying Blitz he slept next to a 'hot-line' telephone to none other than Prime Minister Winston Churchill himself, who was fully aware of the German Fuhrer's dangerous obsession with the Occult. He officially left the "Great Game" in 1946 and returned after decommissioning to the family business and to his own interest in oriental philosophies. After the death of is father, Geoffrey acquired the lease to No.19 Cecil Court.

As the decades had past, the best-known occult 'centre' in London was not the headquarters of any sect or group, but this bookshop. Geoffrey continued to run the day-to-day business, a veritable walking encyclopaedia of philosophy, religion, and the paranormal. Cecil Court, by the late Sixties, breathed an air of lonely eccentricity on winter afternoons. Chilly winds blew the leaves past the shop fronts; an antique shop with faded prints of old London and Marie Lloyd songbooks, another from which the garishly painted face of an Egyptian mummy case stared mournfully across the way at Dragoon helmets of the Crimean War. Even the tiny railway stations in the model shop at one end showed 1920s posters for Coleman's Mustard and Woodbines on their little walls. But Watkins Books during the 'Peace & Love' era was crowded full with hip young customers, browsing around the packed bookshelves.

Idealism & Austerity
At this point Stuart and Robinson, wealthy and regular customers associated with the Gurdjieff and Ouspensky movement arrived to help. They bought Geoffrey Watkins out and rejuvenated the shop, but kept him on as a genteel backroom presence to advise the inquisitive customer on hand. They held a distinctively Gurjieffian vision of the business, a specialised minority corner of the New age market. They also expanded the publishing wing, and went on to create an Ecology Bookshop in Belgrave Square, an idealistic development that was a decade ahead of its time, as it unfortunately suffered through lack of public interest (at the time) in saving our planet from industrial over-development.

Watkins Books, by the end of the decade of Disco, Watergate, and Trade Union strikes itself started to suffer from the pressures of rapidly soaring rents and rates, not to mention increasing competition, and the two partners found that running the shop was no longer financially viable.

Geoffrey died in the early 1980s. At his grand shop, he had served a distinguished six decades in the world of ‘Mystical Intelligence’, and we honour his immortal memory today and always.

One Hundred Years Later
In the Orwellian year of 1984 the bookshop was sold to Donald Weiser, the American publisher of oriental and occult books, Henry Suzuki, the manager of the erstwhile Weiser Bookstore in the New York metropolis, and Robert Chris, whose uncle (of the same name) had been a bookseller of 20th century English literature and poetry in Cecil Court since 1934. On the death of Robert Chris Senior, his nephew and his wife Val turned 8 Cecil Court into London's first bookshop specialising in complementary medicine and healing.
New owners meant new energy and the business, which had seen better days, began a sustained recovery with sales increasing sixfold in a decade. A reputation for indifferent customer service was replaced by a Val's assiduous attention to detail. Her naturally caring nature was the source of many unconventional but highly successful initiatives designed to make people feel good about themselves. First the staff, and once they were happy, then the customers.

These initiatives included a complete refurbishment of our premises opening up the basement and thereby doubling the amount of bookshop space and allowing for a far greater display of stock. Val brought over her business from No. 8 and thus added the "body" constituent to the Watkins "mind and spirit" tradition! They computerised all the internal systems - with over 24,000 titles to manage from over 500 different suppliers and with growing numbers of customer orders shipped daily around the world this was the only way to provide customers with the kind of service that everyone expects today.

The New Millennium
In late 1999 as fireworks were prepared along the Thames, the BA London Eye hoop rose high against the skyline and the last minutes touches were being hastily done to the infamous Greenwich peninsular Dome, Watkins Books Ltd once again changed ownership and an ambitious programme of expansion was set in motion – new carpets, expensive air-conditioning, new computers and a swish company re-branding no less.