So we get a winner, down on Brewer Street in Soho, the Glasshouse Stores was voted the number one pub of the noughties by those of us who voted. A nice pub sure, but so much better than the others? To find out why it scored so highly I thought I woul[…]

The Lord John Russell is a blue pub. It is the only blue pub I know. Blue on the outside certainly, plenty of pubs do that. But very few continue this motif indoors. But then this is part of the joy of the LJR. It is so clearly a proper pub, with its[…]

photo by Ewan-M
The Royal Oak is wonderful because it is such a perfect example of an ordinary pub. It does nothing extraordinary or alarming. It is a Proper Pub, with small rooms and nicely mismatched furniture, and random plates and pictures on t[…]

So, we reach the top 4, an area, one would assume, of almost complete agreement between those voting but, for some reason, our fourth choice has elicited strong opinions, hence two different views. Let’s take this to the comments box!!![…]

Small poky one room pub whose small pokiness is often accentuated by being in Soho, having a dripping ceiling, a galley bar in the thinnest part of the pub and – oh – a bloke out back playing 45’s with flying barbie dolls dangling f[…]

Very few pubs attract punters with the promise of shocks which will have you leaping out of your seat. And yet the second time I went to the Shakespeare’s Head, that was the reason I went there. I wanted to see Shakey newcomers surprised when, […]

This is the only pub on our list to have changed hands, its name and still retained a degree of quality. We came into the new millennium with this odd station pub being called the Head Of Steam, and left with the much grander name of the Doric Arch. […]

This was a favourite after-work pub for years, being within easy walking distance of the office but seemingly off the radar of anyone else working there. Despite being in a busy tourist area, it maintains its hidden gem status by sitting, tucked away[…]

For a long, long time my Default London Pub was the Blue Posts on Newman Street. I’m a big fan of the Sam Smiths brand, and the BPNS had it all: cheap, cosy, usually full of people I knew and – most importantly – just around the cor[…]

There are two words that according to modern usage I pronounce wrong. I will hold my hand up to “Colander” – which I pronounce “cullander” to rhyme with Wallander* as a throwback to believing it etymology being tied to t[…]