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Pubs in books


KEV67

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I am currently reading Our Mutual Friend (Charles Dickens), which has a pub called The Six Jolly Fellowships, which made me think about this.

 

I always thought Keith Talent's favourite pub, The Black Cross, in London Fields (Martin Amis) had an appropriate name.

 

George Elliot often had pubs in her books. There were four in Middlemarch, including The Tankard and The Green Dragon, I think. My favourite pub name of hers was The Hand and Banner in Daniel Deronda. Sadly there is no Hand and Banner pub in Britain at the moment.

 

I've noticed that The Wetherspoons chain sometimes uses literary pub names, for example, there is now a Moon Under Water in Milton Keynes, which was George Orwell's ideal pub.

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  • 1 month later...

I've only just noticed this thread, @KEV67 - I'm surprised nobody else has posted in it.  :) The most obvious one I can think of is  Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier.  I would like to visit the inn one day, although it is, obviously, very commercialised.

 

Not a pub, but Dickens also mentions the hotel The Royal Victoria and Bull in Rochester - I drank many a Midori (yuk!) in there as a late teen/early twenty gal!  :D

 

I'm going on a London Literary Pub Crawl with my husband in August, so I'll report back then.  :)

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There's a Moon Under Water in Manchester as well. There is also Peveril of the Peak, although it is not named after the Walter Scott novel. Worth a visit though just for how distinctive a place it is! 

 

I have also imbibed a few pints in the Angel, which featured in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. 

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We had a family celebration (my Aunt and Uncle's golden wedding) at the Peveril of the Peak hotel, @Alexi    :D

 

Ooh, and that reminds me about the pub in Rutland that featured in our Counties book!

 

I have also been into the hotel that featured in Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge  - The Kings Arms Hotel in Dorchester.

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There's a Moon over Water in Central London, or there used to be; it might have been demolished to make way for Crossrail, I think I've seen a couple of others as well.

 

A pub mentioned in (I think) Barnaby Rudge is quite near where I live, I've been there a couple of times but not for a while now.  Dickens did stay there, as did (so it's rumoured anyway) Dick Turpin (notorious highwayman)!

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This could start a massive thread!  A few that I can remember off the top of my head (all real pubs):

 

Tom Brown's Schooldays: The Peacock Inn, Islington (Tom's departure point for Rugby)

 

Pickwick Papers:  in addition to the Bull in Rochester that Janet mentions, PP is stuffed with pubs/inns.  They include The Angel Inn in Bury St Edmunds (scene of the election), The Leather Bottle in Cobham, Kent (Tracy Tupman's refuge after being jilted), The George and Vulture (headquarters of the Pickwick Club), The White Hart in Southwark (where Pickwick meets Sam Weller, now demolished) - also mentioned in Henry VI

 

Three Men in a Boat includes a few - usually where the three friends stay or eat.  The Barley Mow (where precisely?) is one, The Bull in Streatley is another. 

 

The Tabard, Southwark, in Canterbury Tales.

 

The Boar's Head in Henry IV parts 1 and 2.

 

The George, Southwark, appears in Little Dorrit

 

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4 hours ago, willoyd said:

Pickwick Papers:  in addition to the Bull in Rochester that Janet mentions, PP is stuffed with pubs/inns.  They include... The Leather Bottle in Cobham, Kent (Tracy Tupman's refuge after being jilted)

How could I forget that, @willoyd! Although I haven't read PP yet, we spent our wedding night in the Leather Bottle in Cobham! :)

 

4 hours ago, willoyd said:

The White Hart in Southwark (where Pickwick meets Sam Weller, now demolished) - also mentioned in Henry VI

There is a pub in Bath called the Sam Weller. I guess it must be named after that character too.

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I've been to The George at Southwark, it's lovely with a gorgeous courtyard garden, it does get packed though.  It's actually owned by the National Trust now, I think it's the last galleried coaching inn in the country (definitely in London anyway).

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  • 3 months later...

There was a pub called The Ragged Trousers in Tumbridge Wells. I wondered whether this was a reference to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

 

When I was walking from Liverpool St Station to Kings Cross Station one Sunday, I passed a pub called the Betsy Trotwood, who is David Copperfield's aunt.

 

There is a pub in my home town of Reading called Great Expectations. It used to be a Mechanics Institute in Victorian times. Charles Dickens did a reading there once, but it was from A Christmas Carol.

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  • 2 years later...
On 05/07/2017 at 10:43 PM, Alexi said:

There's a Moon Under Water in Manchester as well. There is also Peveril of the Peak, although it is not named after the Walter Scott novel. Worth a visit though just for how distinctive a place it is! 

 

I have also imbibed a few pints in the Angel, which featured in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. 

I think The Angel was mentioned The Pickwick Papers, although, thinking about it, that was The Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds.

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I noticed that there was a Wetherspoons pub called The Joseph Conrad in Lowestoft. I don't know what connection Joseph Conrad had with the place.

 

I wish someone would open a pub called the Hand and Banner. It was the pub in Daniel Deronda in which Dan meets some politically active people through whom he meets other people who become important to him. Pubs play a big part in George Eliot's works.

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The Admiral Benbow Inn in Penzance (from Treasure Island) is brilliant in real life. It's really quirky inside, with loads of antique maritime artefacts (the table I ate at was at a ships wheel!) and the food was lovely (and, perhaps surprisingly, very reasonably priced!). I'd love to go back. 

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2 hours ago, Hayley said:

The Admiral Benbow Inn in Penzance (from Treasure Island) is brilliant in real life. It's really quirky inside, with loads of antique maritime artefacts (the table I ate at was at a ships wheel!) and the food was lovely (and, perhaps surprisingly, very reasonably priced!). I'd love to go back. 

Interesting, I sometimes go to Penzance for work reasons and have walked past the Admiral Benbow numerous times. It is not one of my favourites though.

 

In Reading, where I live, there is a bar/ night club called Up The Junction. This is just down the road from Cemetery Junction, so called because of the graveyard. There was also a pop song by Squeeze in the 70s or 80s with the same name. However, before that in the 60s, there was a book by Nell Gunn (need to check). It was a bit grim.

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The book "Up The Junction", by Nell Dunn, referred to the area around Clapham Junction, not to a public house.  There may be, or may have been at some time, a pub of that name in the area, or there may not.

No doubt there have been plenty of pubs called "The Junction"  in the vicinity of many other railway junctions, it is not uncommon, but not necessarily with any literary connection.

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