Elvis Shakespeare, Leith, Edinburgh

This place is wonderful, all 7”s and 12”s are arranged beautifully and I felt like a kid in a sweet shop when I visited a few times, picked up a couple of those rare Wedding Present “Hit Parade” 7”s on my last visit. I highly recommend it.

collection of records, cds books if you give the guy at the counter your artist he will e-mail you when he has the artist in stock

Elvis Shakespeare has a great name. Full stop. The juxtaposition of the two fully encapsulates this gem of a bookstore on Leith walk. As befits the UNESCO city of Literature, Edinburgh is awash in bookstores, in a number of different settings, corporate, charity shops, and in this case, independent. One afternoon, last week, I strolled in for the first time and perused the literature while my music geek husband checked out the tunes. The literature is well picked- and again- completely epitomized the character of the shop name: I was checking out biographies and Rupert Everett's recent bibliographic jaunt sat beside Gertrude Stein's 'The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'. They each sat at 3 quid a pop which is indicative of the reasonableness of the shop: a classic and a recent pop culture best-seller could fetch at least a fiver each. My husband thoroughly approved the music section- gave it two thumbs up- which was a feat as he is rarely satisfied. I digress. As I was looking at the kitsch wall of records: one featuring the Smurfs, the proprieter struck up a conversation with us- we discussed the beauty of kitsch, the prevalence of youtube and the scarcity of cheap (yet good) record players in the city. We introduced ourselves properly and he invited us to an in-store show he was holding with a singer/songwriter he highly commended. We walked away, one biography in hand, 3 quid spent feeling remarkably satisifed. This is because many nebbish record stores we have frequented have had staff that have had a seemingly holier-than-thou attitude to us mere plebs. High Fidelity- being the obvious literary example I can cite- which rings just a little bit true to us. How lovely to have a) a bookstore stocked with good books b) an independent music store selling good music c) a neighbourhood community invite to an event and d) a lovely owner who was not hesitant to be warm and inviting. Will return. Will spend what little money I have. Will be worth it.

Elvis Shakepeare is a great little shop on Leith Walk.

They sell vinyl records, cds, vhs tapes, DVDs, comics and every type of book you could imagine.

It's the type of place you could spend an hour or so just happily browsing, but you will end up buying something.

The staff are vey friendly and if you are looking for something specific, will help you try to find whatever you are looking for.