THE owners of a bookshop at the centre of East Oxford's alternative culture are planning to sell up after 28 years.

Ruth Ashcroft, 60, and Anthony Cheke, 65, are hoping to find a buyer for the Inner Bookshop in Magdalen Road, which specialises in books about spirituality, environmentalism, psychology and the occult.

However, the couple are not retiring to lead a quiet life in the country, but intend to continue their campaigning work in East Oxford.

"We will be keeping up our interest in nature conservation locally," said Ms Ashcroft.

"One of our new projects is the Friends of Aston's Eyot, land owned by Christ Church, which has agreed to let a group of local people manage the site for wildlife."

The business started in 1982 in the back room of the former radical bookshop EOA Books, near the Plain in Cowley Road. The name was a pun on its location and the type of books sold — about a person’s ‘inner life’.

The couple, both academic biologists, took over the whole shop in 1989 after EOA Books owner Jon Carpenter moved to Charlbury, where he runs Evenlode Books and publishes local authors under the Wychwood Press imprint.

Ms Ashcroft and Mr Cheke continued the shop's tradition of community involvement after moving in 1992 to Magdalen Road, where the window is covered with posters advertising everything from reiki and sufism to local protest groups.

By the mid-1990s New Age philosophy was spreading and the shop had become one of the largest sellers of the increasingly popular topic known in the trade as ‘mind-body-spirit’.

The growth of the Internet has allowed it to sell to customers all over the world. The couple also published the Oxford Green Pages directory for more than 20 years.

Mr Cheke, a founder member of the Ecology Party, forerunner of the Green Party, continued his ecological research, writing the definitive text on the fauna of Mauritius, a 420-book which was the product of 20 years' work.

They are now hoping someone will take over the bookshop as a "labour of love".

Ms Ashcroft said: "There is no doubt that times are hard for small bookshops. But the area around here has a lot going for it. There are lots of interesting shops, not just alternative."

Mr Cheke said Magdalen Road's long-established shops — which include the Goldfish Bowl, selling fish for aquariums, as well as Silvesters hardware and Gibbons bakery — made a "unique cluster of interesting venues" which had recently undergone a renaissance with the arrival of the vegetarian Magic Café, an electric bike shop and the transformation of the Magdalen Arms into a gastropub.

He said: "There is still scope for knowledgeable people with the right stock to make a reasonable living."

See www.innerbookshop.com.