In a location that so freely supported the expression and publication of alternative voices, it comes as no surprise that Brighton had a reputation for a plethora of radical and unconventional bookshops.
In 1966 an American named Bill Butler opened Unicorn Bookshop on 50 Gloucester Road. Raunchy and subversive, Mr. Butler welcomed visitors asking, “Can I help you locate some filthy books.” The Unicorn Bookshop catered for all things underground: posters, hippy beads, bells, US beat poetry magazines and contemporary fiction. This was one of the first and very few places where a reader could peruse from America the Evergreen Review, Kulcher, the Los Angeles Free Press, Olympia press publications, the writings of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Bill, a cultural icon himself, swiftly moved into publishing a “considerable number of books and pamphlets on subjects as varied as macrobiotic cookery, alternative Brighton, survival techniques, magic, esoterica and comics”, using the shop as his literary base. The shop owner also wrote poetry and science fiction for many years. He ran a small printing service on the behalf of commissioning customers keen to make their own posters, fliers, and newspapers.
The store’s exterior was nearly as infamous as the literary diversity it guarded inside. John Upton’s large mural depicting moon, stars, rainbows and the rising sun spilled across the face of the building, and from the second floor of the shop a projected cavorting unicorn inspired life into the grey pavement below.
In its later years, The Unicorn was involved in a number of controversies with local police for stocking “obscene” material and Butler was drawn into an expensive legal suit. Yet empathic friends, fellow writers, academics and shop regulars continued to support and rally alongside Bill, with a circulated letter of appeal later turning into the 1970 collection For Bill Butler edited by Eric Mottram and Larry Wallrich.
Behind the scenes financial issues plagued the business, eventually forcing Bill and his Unicorn co-owners to call it a day. The group left Brighton and moved to a remote cottage ‘Nant Gwilw’ in Wales, running a little commune and publishing books from their rural barn. Bill died on the 21st October 1977 in his Shepherd’s Bush flat. The shop in Gloucester road “spluttered on until 1975” under new ownership, but eventually disappeared under the council remodelling at the western end of the street.
From the shop turn westward to walk up towards Queens Road and take the first right into Frederick Place. Continue North and stop at the corner of Trafalgar Street at the Prince Albert Pub by the Railway bridge.