Key Books
Community Bookshop in the heart of the City
Key Books is a new community bookshop, in the heart of the Quay Co-Op but at the outset of the Co-op, back in the 1980s, the bookshop was a central part. It partly funded it but it was also there to provide information, which was very much a political bookshop in the beginning.
It is run by volunteers as a not-for-profit venture, benefitting a range of charitable and cultural ventures we support.
When the book shop re-opened the shelves were stocked by Arthur Leahy’s private book collection. Since then the bookshop expanded as lot of people brought in books and grew the library.
General Manager
Arthur Leahy
The idea of the bookshop is that it is run as a community bookshop and any funds that are generated are put back into community organisations or political campaigns. We would like to provide more political books because that is a service that is not being provided, not from our political stance, there is a lack of information in that area.
“You bring so much of yourself to a book when you’re reading. Whereas with things like television, it throws too much at you, you can’t engage on a personal level. You don’t have to either, you can go to sleep and it will still be on. But a good book will grab you to the extent that you will never forget it.”