About Politicos

Back in February 1997 Iain Dale and John Simmons did something mad. They opened a specialist political bookstore and coffee house, Politico’s, in Artillery Row, just off Victoria Street in the heart of the Westminster village. It was a political haven and soon established itself as a meeting place and event venue, as well as housing vast numbers of political books, memorabilia items, postcards and novelty items. For seven years, it hosted everyone from the casual bookbuyer to visiting politicians from other countries. In 2004, due to a massive rent hike, the advent of the congestion charge and Amazon, the store closed and went online. Two years later the online shop was sold to the business publishers Harriman House.

But in September 2012 the Politico’s name was bought back by Iain Dale and it’s now relaunching ‘under old management’. Why?

In February 2020 someone emailed Iain to ask how they could get a signed copy of his about to be published book WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG. Iain launched what was supposed to be a one page online shop purely to sell his book. Orders started flooding in and he then added some old stock of mugs and cards from the original Politico’s days. He then decided to commission some politically themed mugs, and he was soon inundated with orders. Over the 2020 lockdown period the shop grew to host more than 100 products. He sold more than 1500 signed copies of WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG, so decided to take the plunge and relaunch Politicos.co.uk as a new online shop.

Politicos.co.uk aims to bring you the widest selection of political titles and merchandise on the web. Other general online bookshops do a great job in many ways but it’s very difficult to find political items all in one place.

We have deliberately made this site easy to navigate, and hope you find what you are looking for. Each title is added by us individually. We don’t take bibliographic feeds. If you don’t see a book or a product you think we ought to be stocking, please let us know and we’ll add it. We’re starting off with titles from Iain’s old company Biteback but we hope to build a relationship with other political publishers and make Politico’s the ultimate one stop shop, not just for political books, but everything else too.

Do sign up to our email list and we’ll keep you up to date with special offers and promotions. Anyway, it’s great to be back.