REVIEWS
Heavenly body
Silver Moon was more than just a bookshop—it was how many people, especially women, found themselves
by Lucy Scholes
© ROBIN A. FORBES
“Wearied your dungarees too naff for Sisterwrite?” This was the candid first draft of an advert for the newly opened Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop, written by one of its founders, Sue Butterworth.
The ad was for the catalogue of the first Feminist Book Fair, which took place in London in early June 1984. Silver Moon had unlocked its doors only days earlier. On 31st May, to be exact, and at 68 Charing Cross Road, the West End thoroughfare that has been synonymous with bookselling since the late Victorian era. Silver Moon remained there for an impressive 17 years, weathering the worst injustices of Thatcherite Britain, including Section 28. Forged in the radical tumult of the 1970s, the bookshop was a beacon of sisterly solidarity for women navigating their way from secondto third-wave feminism, and on into the 21st century.
Sadly, in 2004, only three years after the bookshop closed, Butterworth died of cancer. But 20 years on, her ex-lover, longtime business partner and co-founder of Silver Moon, Jane Cholmeley, has written an eye-opening, rabble-rousing and moving memoir. It details the blood, sweat, tears, laughter and love that she, Butterworth, Jane Anger (the bookshop’s third co-founder) and all the other women involved in Silver Moon poured into this now legendary institution.