Entertainment in London
Buying Books
Londoners are great readers．They buy vast numbers of newspapers and magazines and even of books especially paperbacks, which are still comparatively cheap in spite of ever-increasing rises in the costs of printing．They still continue to buy 'proper' books, too, printed on good paper and bound between hard covers.
There are many streets in London containing shops which specialize in book-selling．Perhaps the best known of these is Charing Cross Road in the very heart of London．Here bookshops of all sorts and sizes are to be found, from the celebrated one which boasts of being 'the biggest bookshop in the world' to the tiny, dusty little places which seem to have been left over from Dickens' time．Many of them specialize in second-hand books, in art books, in foreign books, in books of philosophy, politics or any other of the various subjects about which books may be written．One shop in this area specializes solely in books about ballet!
Although it may be the most convenient place for Londoners to buy books, Charing Cross Road is not the cheapest．For the really cheap second-hand volumes, the collector must venture off the busy and crowded roads, to Farringdon Road in the East Central district of London．Here there is nothing so grand as bookshops．Instead, the booksellers come along each morning and tip out their sacks of books on to barrows(推车) which line the gutters(贫民区)．And the collectors, some professional and some , who have been waiting for them, pounce towards the sellers．In places like this one can still, occasionally, pick up for a few pence an old volume that may be worth many pounds.
Both Charing Cross Road and Farringdon Road are well-known places of the book buyer．Yet all over London there are bookshops, in places not so well known, where the books are equally varied and exciting．It is in the sympathetic atmosphere of such shops that the loyal book buyer feels most at home．In these shops, even the life-long book-browser is frequently rewarded by the accidental discovery of previously unknown delights．One could, in fact, easily spend a lifetime exploring London's bookshops．There are many less pleasant ways of spending time!
Going to the Theatre
London is very rich in theatres: there are over forty in the West End alone--more than enough to ensure that there will always be at least two or three shows running to suit every kind taste, whether serious or lighthearted.
Some of them are specialist theatres．The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where the great opera singers of the world can be heard, is the home of opera and the Royal Ballet．The London Coliseum now houses the English National Opera Company, which encourages English singers in particular and performs most operas in English at popular prices.
Some theatres concentrate on the classics and serious drama, some on light comedy, some on musicals．Most theatres have a personality of their own, from the old, such as the Theatre Royal (also called the 'Haymarket') in the Haymarket, to the more modern such as the recently opened Baibican centre in the city．The National Theatre has three separate theatres in its new building by Waterloo Bridge．At the new Barbican centre the Royal Shakespeare Company has their London home—their other centre is at Stratford-on-Avon.
Most of the old London theatres are concentrated in a very small area, within a stone's throw of the Piccadilly and Leicester Square tube stations．As the evening performances normally begin either at seven-thirty or eight p．m., there is a kind of minor rush-hour between seven-fif and eight o'clock in this district．People stream out of the nearby tube stations, the pavements are crowded, and taxis and private cars maneuver into position as they drop theatre-goers outside the entrance to each theatre．There is another minor rush-hour when the performance finishes．The theatre in