One notable survivor from the 1970s is News from Nowhere, the not-for-profit "radical and community" bookshop. It was founded by Bob Dent in 1974 and started off in a tiny shop on Manchester Street near the Mersey Tunnel entrance. A creaky wooden staircase led to an upstairs room which the Free Press used as an office.
A couple of years later News from Nowhere moved to larger premises on Whitechapel abandoned by a firm selling typewriters and other office equipment. Bob was joined there by Mandy Vere who stayed with the shop until her retirement 45 years later. The Free Press also had an upstairs office at the back of the shop.
The bookshop eventually settled in Bold Street, in a building that it now owns. In recent years it has been run by a women's cooperative.
The shop's name comes from the title of a novel by William Morris published in 1890 and set in a utopian socialist society where there is "no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no marriage or divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class system."
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The opening pages of William Morris's novel
Further reading ...
News from Nowhere: a triumph of patience and hope
Gerry Cordon. Blog post, 2 June 2014
This lovely Liverpool bookshop is run by a women workers’ collective
Alice Lorenzato-Lloyd. Secret Liverpool, 8 March 2023
A life through books: Five decades of radical politics in Liverpool
Profile of Mandy Vere, longest-serving member of the News from Nowhere collective, by Jane Anderson for Liverpolitan website (undated)
Life inside Liverpool’s radical bookshop News From Nowhere on Bold Street
Jamie McLoughlin. Liverpool Echo, 28 October 2017
News from Nowhere
Independent Liverpool (undated)