Culture
What the world’s most famous bookshop reveals about culture Shakespeare and Company in Paris is turning 75. Is its success replicable? August 27th 2026 | paris T he summer afternoon was hot, but no one in the queue seemed bothered. Dozens were patiently waiting to enter Shakespeare and Company, a storied bookshop perched on the left bank of the Seine opposite Notre Dame cathedral. “That’s where Shakespeare wrote for a while,” a passerby informed her friends. No one corrected her—discretion being the better part of valour and all. “The myth-telling is fascinating,” says Sylvia Whitman, who runs the English-language bookshop with her partner. “It adds to the house of stories that a bookshop can be.” She has heard it all: that Shakespeare, who never left England, resided here, or that Sylvia Plath , another poet, founded it. In fact, Shakespeare and Company was launched by Ms Whitman’s father, George, 75 years ago this month (first under the name Le Mistral). It is probably th...