Nick Cave fans have been swarming a charity store in Hove after the singer-songwriter donated 2,000 books there.
The Australian artist donated 2,000 books from his own personal collection to an Oxfam Bookshop located on Blatchington Road in Hove. The books donated were previously a part of his personal library, which The Guardian reports was once recreated for an art installation in Denmark and Canada.
Books included in the donation include a first edition of Johnny Cash’s novel Man In White, “a recipe book about aphrodisiacs”, and books written by Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan, as per The Times.
An employee at the bookshop named Richard spoke to The Argus about the “very interesting donation”, and said that the genres and types of books Cave handed over “are very wide ranging”.
“There’s philosophy, art, religion, even old fiction paperbacks. It’s an incredibly varied donation,” he shared. “He clearly held on to his books, some of them are quite old.”
According to The Times report, news of the donation spread quickly, and last Friday (July 18) saw “a crowd of people” visiting the Hove charity shop to go through the collection. Some even reported finding other items seemingly belonging to Cave in the books, too.
One contained a plane ticket for a flight to Amsterdam, while others had items including a map of the US, an empty packet of cigarettes, and an “old envelope with the words ‘Luke’s tooth’ written in Cave’s distinctive handwriting.”
While Richard told The Argus that it was rare for fans to find other items in the books as “it’s not like [Cave] was one of these people who had a book plate or wrote his name in”, some have noticed that some sentences of the books have been underlined and have passages noted in the artist’s handwriting.
Nick Cave fans swarm charity bookshop in UK after musician donates thousands of books. “The Australian singer made the donation to Hove’s Oxfam Bookshop on Blatchington Road.”https://t.co/d8uJ1URshk
— Oxfam News Team (@oxfamgbpress) July 21, 2025
By the following morning (July 19) a queue had formed at the shop as word continued to spread, and a spokesperson for Cave told The Guardian that he thinks “the discoveries will remain intriguing mysteries for those who find them”.
It is no secret that the ‘Into My Arms’ singer is an avid reader. As aforementioned, his wide collection of literature was once recreated as part of an international art exhibition. As well as that, in 2020, Cave took to his Red Hand Files website to share a list of his 50 favourite books.
“Without my library in front of me, it is a little difficult to assemble a comprehensive list of my forty most loved books. The best I can do is throw together a rather formless and incoherent grab bag of titles that come to mind at this moment that, for one reason or another, I have loved over the years,” he said to one fan who reached out asking about his favourite titles.
His list included Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, Jerome Rothenberg’s America A Prophecy, Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, Gerald Basil Edwards’ The Book of Ebenezer Le Page and The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Inside Nick Cave’s box for charity: Rushdie, McEwan and secret souvenirs @thetimes https://t.co/h8p6eFeLtZ
— Oxfam News Team (@oxfamgbpress) July 20, 2025
“I think I got carried away,” he shared. “I think there are fifty — in no particular order.”
In other Nick Cave news, the artist has recently shared his pre-show ritual and his own advice for finishing songs, and also revealed that he turned down an opportunity to collaborate with Morrissey, despite considering him one of “the best lyricists of his generation”.
Before then, Cave spoke to NME in 2023 Cave and opened up about how he believes some of the most powerful music often comes from the most divisive personalities.
“I don’t particularly care where my art comes from. It doesn’t bother me if someone wears a For Britain badge [Morrissey] or is an anti-semite or whatever and they’re making extraordinary music,” he explained. “It’s not that I agree with their politics, which I don’t, I just think that what they’re putting into the world [with music] is essentially good so it should be encouraged.”
“It’s no accident that the really great stuff is often made by the most problematic people,” he continued. “I don’t quite understand it, but there’s certainly no metric that says that virtuousness makes good art.”
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