Five Blackwell's branches to reopen on Monday

Blackwell's has announced it will be reopening five bookshops next week, as stores across England prepare to open their doors from 15th June.

As well as its flagship Oxford and Cambridge branches, bookshops in Holborn, Manchester and Newcastle will all open next Monday, with safety measures including social distancing, specified entrances and exits and till screens in use.

Each shop will have hand sanitiser on the premises, and card payment will be encouraged.

The branches will also have a designated areas for "quarantined books" which have been browsed but not bought.

Zool Verjee, head of marketing and publicity said: "We are pleased to be re-opening some of our shops from Monday. This is obviously uncharted territory, but we anticipate that many customers will be delighted to be able to browse in physical bookshops once again and we aim to make their shopping experience as safe and easy as we possibly can.

"Plenty of fabulous books continued to be published during lockdown and are in our shops waiting to be discovered, and we greatly look forward to welcoming customers so that they can return to the joy of browsing books in bookshops."

Blackwell's will open its other shops in a phased process, except for the five university campus branches which are now closing permanently.