Step inside the world of Bookish as Gabriel Book’s bookshop comes to London

A corner of Gabriel Book’s 1940s London is being recreated in Cecil Court this week, with a free Bookish-inspired bookshop opening ahead of the detective drama’s return to U&alibi.

Your Book’s Bookshop will run on 25^th and 26^th August, taking inspiration from the antiquarian shop where Mark Gatiss’s bookseller-turned-sleuth conducts his investigations. Visitors will be able to search the shelves for clues and teasers for the forthcoming series, while resident writers will create personalised fictional identities and backstories for guests, typed live as the opening page of an imagined story.

The pop-up coincides with the second series of Bookish, created by and starring Gatiss as Gabriel Book, an antiquarian bookseller who assists the police with mysterious crimes in post-war London.

“Bookish is all about hidden depths – the idea that everyone might be concealing a secret history, hiding in plain sight,” Gatiss said. “Walking through those doors, sitting down at a typewriter and walking away with your own alias and cover story – it’s the closest you’ll get to actually living inside the show.”

The concept is accompanied by research commissioned by U&alibi into the British appetite for reinvention and amateur detective work. Of 2,000 adults surveyed, 44% said they had invented a different version of themselves, while detective was the most popular fictional alter ego respondents would choose. More than half – 55% – also reckoned they would make a good detective, although only 36% went as far as believing they could outsmart the professionals.

For Bookish viewers, the two-day event provides an unusual bridge between the show’s first and second series, recreating one of its central locations just as Gabriel Book prepares to reopen his casebook on screen.

The editorial unit

Your Book’s Bookshop takes place at 22-24 Cecil Court, London, on 25^th and 26^th August, with free tickets available online. Bookish season two is released on U&alibi on 26^th August 2026.

Watch the trailer for Bookish season two here: