Lavender Menace (bookshop)

logo for the Community Interest Company

Lavender Menace is a gay bookshop in St Margaret’s House, 151 London Road, Edinburgh. The original bookshop was in Forth Street, Edinburgh and opened in 1982..

The original bookshop was set up by Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr and developed from the Open Gaze bookstall created by Bob Orr in 1976 as part of the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group’s Gay Information Centre in Broughton Street. Lavender Books was set up as a collective, and began selling lesbian and gay books and paraphernalia at conferences and marches across the UK between 1980 and 1981. In 1982 the bookshop was established in Forth Street, Edinburgh.

The current Lavender Menace company is "a Community Interest Company established to promote and benefit the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, non-binary, intersectional (LGBT+) community and their allies. Company Number SC663479."

Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive and Blog appears on Facebook .

Lavender Menace was also the name of an LGBT youth project in Dumfries and Galloway.