Bookshops operate as more than just spaces where the commercial retail of books occurs.  They are places of ideas, which encourage us to venture beyond our own experiences and expand imaginative and intellectual horizons.  Indeed, as Martin Latham has claimed, bookshops do this even more successfully than universities: “it seems, indeed, such institutionalized thinking is less likely to be mould-breaking; whereas a bookshop, used open-mindedly enough, uniquely challenges the normative thinking which dulls our reason and clouds our souls (The Bookseller’s Tale, p. 305). This panel looks at some ways the interface of the bookshop has fostered, or is fostering, new ideas, whether in fictionalised accounts of bookshops or histories of actual ones.