Who’s behind London’s hottest new bookstore? Freud’s librarian grandson!

Well, “great-great grandson,” to be technical about it.

Jonah Freud, heir to the founder of psychoanalysis, is taking London by storm. The entrepreneur recently linked to Lily Allen is one of the two impresarios behind Reference Point, a London bookshop specializing in art collections, rare books, cheeky esoterica, and other hard-to-find “visual literature.”

A writer and former scene kid, Freud Jr. co-founded Reference Point with the performer and nightclub veteran Sophia Dowson Collins back in 2020. The store is the natural conclusion of his lifelong (and apparently epigenetic) love affair with books.

As Freud told The Financial Times this week, he was a librarian at primary school. Which we can only imagine made the ancestors proud.

Located just off the Strand, Reference Point is not designed to resemble grandpa’s study. The store aims instead to put a chic spin on the browsing experience. (I.e., there are mismatched modernist chairs. And a bar.)

The collection is 10,000 volumes strong and growing. Diamonds in the rough are the name of the game. Especially for the wholesale buying fashion designers who may keep this passion project afloat.

According to the Times, inside Reference Point a curious researcher “might pick up a copy of Aspen, Phyllis Johnson’s ‘magazine in a box’ from the 1960s, a Moderna Museet catalogue, or Public Relations, Garry Winogrand’s book of photographs of 1970s America.”

A quick perusal of online offerings points a shopper to plenty of prose, too. There are some rare Muriel Spark and Ishmael Reed titles, as well as something called The Beat Generation Cookbook.

Heavy is the head in a dynasty, of course. But our sincere compliments to the curators. We wish Freud Jr. all the best with the store, with special props for continuing the family hobby.

Among other things, OG Freud was known for his “greed for knowledge.”