Just an addendum of the pub history stuff, I walked past the board outside the Bull & Mouth on New Oxford Street last night which has a detailed history of the pub and its name. The only part of this it that really interests me is at the end. The pub itself is a bog standard T&J Bernard hostelry, overpriced but okay – its tables are crammed in a nice way and it knows how to suck a tourist in from the hotel next door. Still its history explains its somewhat unusual name, leaving in the tantalizing tit-bit that the pub changed its name in 1982 to The Falkland Arms. It changed back in 2000.
The name the Bull & Mouth is more interesting I suppose and ties into a long more illustrious history. But when I first drunk there it was The Falkland Arms and whilst it’s obvious why the name was changed I’m a little bit sad it was changed back. There are plenty of pubs called The Trafalgar still knocking about after all, and this is the way pubs actually document history.