Edinburgh Books has been a landmark for book lovers for more than twenty years. Formerly known as West Port Books, it was saved by the skin of its teeth from becoming yet another café in 2006.

This off-beat Edinburgh bookshop has a huge, wide ranging stock of second-hand and antiquarian books: just when you think you’ve scanned every shelf you find the stairs and realise there are four rooms in the basement. For the reader, there is a large stock of fiction and non-fiction; for the collector, a sizeable number of intriguing titles.

The atmosphere in this second-hand Edinburgh bookshop tends towards the dog-eared and slighty foxed, but glimpses of rarity and respectability can be encountered if you look hard enough. Clarence the water buffalo keeps a beady eye on proceedings aided by Graham, the rather stuck-up grouse.

One basement room is rented by Alba Musick of Glasgow and is full of sheet music.