Shakespeare's Pub: A Barstool History of London as Seen Through the Windows of Its Oldest Pub - The George Inn - Hardcover

Brown, Pete

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250033888 ISBN 13: 9781250033888

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2013

Synopsis

A history of Britain told through the story of one very special pub, from "The Beer Drinker's Bill Bryson" (Times Literary Supplement)


Welcome to the George Inn near London Bridge; a cosy, wood-paneled, galleried coaching house a few minutes' walk from the Thames. Grab yourself a pint, listen to the chatter of the locals and lean back, resting your head against the wall. And then consider this: who else has rested their head against that wall, over the last six hundred years?

Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims almost certainly drank in the George on their way out of London to Canterbury. It's fair to say that Shakespeare popped in from the nearby Globe for a pint, and we know that Dickens certainly did. Mail carriers changed their horses here, before heading to all four corners of Britain―while sailors drank here before visiting all four corners of the world.

The pub, as Pete Brown points out, is the 'primordial cell of British life' and in the George he has found the perfect example. All life is here, from murderers, highwaymen, and ladies of the night to gossiping peddlers and hard-working clerks. So sit back with Shakespeare's Pub and watch as buildings rise and fall over the centuries, and 'the beer drinker's Bill Bryson' (UK's Times Literary Supplement) takes us on an entertaining tour through six centuries of history, through the stories of everyone that ever drank in one pub.

About this title

About the Author

PETE BROWN used to advertise lager for a living, until he realized that writing books about beer was even more fun, and entailed drinking even more beer. He appears regularly on television as a beer expert, writes on beer for a variety of publications and is the author of Man Walks into a Pub and the award-winning travel book Three Sheets to the Wind. He was named the British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Writer of the Year 2009. He lives in London.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Brown’s fourth book on the world of beer is a history of innkeeping in England, because inns found it essential to brew. At the center of the centuries-long story is London’s oldest inn, the George, just a hop-skip south of London Bridge in Southwark. The George’s heritage is traceable from Chaucer’s day, though the Canterbury pilgrims embarked from the Tabard next door, and it figures in Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. Whether Shakespeare patronized the George can’t be nailed down, but Southwark was London’s theater district, so why not assume? The connections of inns and literature form one strand of Brown’s exposition throughout, with wagoning (i.e., hauling goods), quartering both long-term and overnight, victualing, and conventioneering (local councils, clubs, political factions) constituting others. Less enduring but of immense importance is the great age of coaching, from the late seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, during which inns flourished as never before or since. As befits his convivial subject, Brown writes as a spellbinding raconteur, keeping to each chapter’s topic while taking off on tangents that never prove irrelevant and joking to beat the band but never trying our patience. A book to be read and reread, straight through or piecemeal, chuckling and, ideally, sipping a pint all the while. --Ray Olson

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1250033888
• ISBN 13: 9781250033888
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368