Town Mouse

What does your ideal pub look like?

Many of you will remember George Orwell’s imaginary tavern. He called it The Moon Under Water in a 1946 article in the Evening Standard. It had good beer, no piano, simple food, an open fire, barmaids who called you ‘dear’ and a solid Victorian vibe. Children were welcome and, oddly to us, beer was served in pink china mugs.

It seems that in 1946 such pubs were rare, and Orwell says he didn’t know of one. Well, if Orwell fast-forwarded to 2022, I reckon he’d be pleasantly surprised by the state of British pubs, and the influence his essay has had.

Everywhere you go, pubs seem to get better. They generally serve good beer and simple food and do not have music.

And, in the country, you can spend the night in them – as people did in the coaching inns of old – meaning you can stumble upstairs at the end of the evening, with no worries about how to get home.

My own London local, on the edge of Notting Hill, is called The Cow. It’s owned by Tom Conran, son of Terence, and comes quite close to Orwell’s pub. Good beer, oysters, chops, Victorian vibes, friendly bar staff, regulars and no music.

It’s a very posh pub, though. Last time I went, David Beckham was in there, and you’d need to be on his earnings level not to balk at the prices. A quick pub lunch for two could set you back £120.

By contrast, there’s a very good and modestly priced country pub I visited recently. Orwell would certainly have approved of it. Beer was £3.60 a pint, and lunch was anything you want, as long as it’s a pasty. For £4. Meaning a quick pub lunch for two would set you back a reasonable £15.20 (or, in our case, more like £30 as we had quite a lot of beer).

Instead of a bar, there is a hatch, from which beaming staff serve the beer and pasties with great efficiency. It’s called the Square and Compass and it’s in Worth Matravers, in the heart of the quarrying area in Purbeck, south Dorset.

We visited on a sunny Saturday at lunchtime, and the extensive outdoor area was packed with bicyclists, walkers and locals. It’s more 18th-century than Victorian; which I prefer. Cosy.

When I was a country mouse, I converted a side room in our rented farmhouse into my perfect pub, the Green Man. It had peeling paint on the wall, a dart board, a picture of dogs playing pool and a couple of mirrors with Scottie dogs on them. I commissioned hippie artist Pete Loveday to make a sign for it.

The smoking ban had just come in, but you could smoke in my pub. I installed one of those big pub ashtrays with ‘Skol’ written on it. I had young children at the time, and having a pub at home meant I could go to the pub without leaving the house.

As for pubs with rooms, I recently stayed at the Bull in Totnes, a lovely organic pub, and the Greyhound in Stockbridge, on a weekend pilgrimage from Winchester to Salisbury. Both were excellent and, to use an ugly expression, ‘mid-price’.

If you’re feeling the squeeze, let me put in a word of praise for the Wetherspoons chain. They may lack the charm of landlord-owned 18th-century coaching inns, but they still come pretty close to The Moon Under Water. They serve good beer and simple food and are quiet. They’re very democratic; everyone is welcome.

And they’re amazingly cheap: when I visited the Pilgrim’s Progress in Bedford recently, for a wake, a pint of Doom Bar cost a mere two quid.

My student children like Wetherspoons – or ‘Spoons’, as they call them. They’re friendly and cheap and everywhere: there are over 900 throughout the UK and Ireland. Founder Tim Martin, like the Guinnesses before him, has done well out of selling beer to the masses. In 2020, the chain made a profit of £76.6 million.

Presumably his children and grandchildren will write novels and become society fixtures.

Spoons might not have existed without George Orwell. Martin was inspired to create his pubs by the well-spoken socialist’s essay (though not his politics). His Leicester Square Spoons is indeed called The Moon Under Water.

Back in London, I’m a big fan of the Coach & Horses in Soho, the Dove in Hammersmith, and the Mitre in Holborn Circus, once the hang-out of Dr Johnson. He loved a pub, declaring, ‘As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude.’

That fat old Catholic GK Chesterton also loved a pub. In The Rolling English Road, he celebrates drinking and swaying and getting lost:

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

Chesterton, like Orwell, had his influence on pubs – well, at least he did on the one called Paradise in Kensal Green, named after the last line of The Rolling English Road:

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.