Why it belongs in ORBIS
Topping & Company is an independent bookseller with an Edinburgh shop housed in a former bank. Tall bookcases and rolling ladders form part of a space built for browsing a broad range of titles. The family-run business also organises author events, extending the shop's role beyond a place to pick up a single book.
Topping & Company Booksellers began with a single shop in Ely, Cambridgeshire, opened by Robert and Louise Topping in 2002. The chain has grown carefully rather than quickly since, adding branches in Bath, St Andrews, Edinburgh — opened in 2019 as the fourth shop — and, most recently, York.
The Edinburgh branch occupies a Grade A-listed former bank building designed by the architect William Playfair, spread over three floors and fitted out with oak shelving and a re-clad staircase that keeps the historic interior's sense of warmth. Around 85,000 books line the shelves, reached in places by rolling library ladders, with hand-painted signage throughout — the kind of interior that reads more like a private library than a retail shop. Complimentary tea and coffee is poured for browsers, and the shop runs regular author events plus a "Coffee with a Bookseller" consultation service and signed-first-edition subscriptions organized by genre.
It's an approach built on treating book buying as an occasion rather than an errand — ladders, tea, oak and 85,000 spines to choose from — and the Edinburgh shop, in its former banking hall, is the most architecturally striking setting the family has found for it yet.