I’m reminded that one of the things I praised in that review of the Seven Stars was the absence of a jukebox. I also note that, of the pubs I know on the Standard’s shortlist, I’m not sure any has a jukebox. Is there a pattern here?[…]

The finalists for the Evening Standard’s pub and bar of the year have been published.
I don’t have much to say about the bars on the list, because I haven’t been to any of them. Baltic is two doors down from the Ring, and I know wh[…]

The Ring is, I suppose, a theme pub of a sort. Situated on Blackfriars Road near the long-demolished first home of English boxing, the Blackfriars Ring, the place is a one-room shrine to old boxers, and one gets the impression that a good portion of […]

Amusing to see (17th January) a confirmed Northern toper of confirmed Northern beer dismiss anything as ‘froth’, given how much one hears from our friends in the North about the merits of having a quarter of your pint taken up by just tha[…]

Trick Daddy – Take It 2 Da House
Time was when being a ‘thug’ was all about the absolute rejection of style: the ‘keeping it real’ ethos taken to its repellant-but-compelling extreme. Funny then how nearly all the big na[…]

Decidedly eccentric guide to London pubs from a site for travelling tennis lovers. Goodness knows how the Island Queen made it onto this list, let alone its barely-audible jukebox. Great to hear that ‘the main pub drink is “bitters”[…]

The London is halfway up Ludgate Hill, and is tolerable enough in its way. Its way is a Youngers / S&N pub which likes to pretend it’s more traditional than it is. It was closed the other day when I was considering nipping in for a swift s[…]

Be like Colin and Edmund. Look! Here’s Edmund, and he’s an example to us all. Edmund is an adventurous drinker. One look at the many and various pub crawls he has undertaken in the past 15 years will tell you that. Some, it should be not[…]

The Seven Stars, Carey Street The clientele of this pub is probably enough to put anybody off: pretty much wall-to-wall members of the beknighted legal profession, as one might expect from a pub which is tucked just behind the Royal Courts of Justice[…]

A lock-in! A lock-in! I got a lock-in last night, only my second in two and a half years in London.
I was only recently thinking how much I missed the thrill of seeing the curtains drawn come quarter past eleven and the smiling complicity of all inv[…]