[This review was first published on The London Society website in February 2022]
As a London Blue Badge Guide I take Americans around London – the Tower, the Abbey, through the alleys and courts of the City, museums and galleries – all the internationally famous points of the capital. But I always encourage them to spend an evening in a pub, because it is there that you will see the real London – the colleagues having a couple of drinks before going home, the old friends meeting up, laughing and teasing each other, the couple on a date, the guy in the corner reading a book. You get the hustle and bustle of London: the noise, the joshing, the laughter.
A good pub (and to steal a friend’s aphorism, any pub where you’ve just ordered your second drink is a good pub) has a mix of ages and classes, of men and women and others, separate groups but sharing a common experience. (Expressed better by Phin Harper at the end of this book, “in pubs the divergent lives of diverse citizens barrel into each other – mutually enriched through sharing space, architecture and company”.)
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