After the Rain: Trafalgar Street’s last bookshop

Raining Books on Brighton’s Trafalgar Street (née Rainbow Books) has been closed “until further notice” for a while now, and while I can’t see anything obvious online, the seagulls tell me it may not be returning.

It’s the last of the three or four second-hand bookshops on Trafalgar Street that I remember being enthralled by when I first arrived in Brighton. The others have given way to cafes and hairdressers now, but Raining was still a place I liked to pop into at lunch break. The slanted shelves in the window were like a huge spiderweb, waiting to trap the unwary booklover, while the rickety broken step leading down to the basement was a trap waiting to keep you there among the sci-fi and childrens books.

I always wonder where all the books for these places go, but I’m much more curious about what treasure gets discovered hidden beneath all the stacks once they’re removed. Perhaps everything flies away and fades back into the fabric of the North Laine, as per previous post, A Memory of Doors.

Thanks for the good times, Raining Books.