Booklover’s London: Create your own literary pub tour

“Show mercy to this boozy man.”

The voice emerged from a dark, back corner near the brass-plate-bedecked bar. Two gentlemen watched while I tried to photograph the long quote painted along a ceiling beam in the Lamb and Flag – the London pub where we stopped for lunch during our do-it-yourself literary pub tour.

As a confirmed booklover, I’d planned our three whirlwind days in London to include various places of a writerly bent: literary pubs; the British Library where we saw the Magna Carta, Shakespeare’s First Folio, and a Gutenberg Bible; a church for journalists; home of the first English dictionary writer; and some pleasing bookstores. (Our itinerary also included multiple stops for musician Bill. More on that in a later story.)

The Lamb and Flag, a famed drinking hole for author Charles Dickens and poet John Dryden, sported a quote that was no doubt a mantra for its patrons: “To die in a Pub is my definite plan, with my mouth to the tap, just as close as I can, then the angels would say, when the singing began, ‘O Lord, please show mercy to this Boozy Man.’”

The voice asking for mercy went on to explain that the Latin inscription on a neighbouring beam was a translation.

“What’s Latin for ‘boozy’?” I asked. The man – who turned out to be called Dave the Broom – said a Jesuit priest who used to drink at the Lamb and Flag with him and his buddy Ron had explained that the Latin inscription was “just about right” although not perfect. I still wasn’t sure which Latin word meant ‘boozy.’

“Are you regulars here?” I asked. Dave pointed to the brass plaque attached to the worn dark-wood bar. “Dave the Broom,” it read. “Because he used to be a streetsweeper,” added Ron. He pointed to a bare spot near his head and said one day his plaque will say, “Electric Ron.”

They like the Lamb and Flag because it’s a friendly place that’s snug and “a real pub – no chrome and fancy drinks,” said Dave. Neither man was prone to verbosity, but we chatted for a bit. Then I thanked them for the information and said it had been a pleasure to meet them. It was!

I had looked for a literary pub tour to join but hadn’t found one that fit our schedule or budget. So, using information readily available online, I cut and pasted to create my own walking tour guidebook, starting at the Duke of York in Fitzrovia and ending at The George in Southwark. We began at 9 a.m., a few hours before the pubs began opening, so we peeked in the windows of the first few establishments. But that was okay since we’d have been as stumbling drunk as Dylan Thomas if we’d imbibed at each of the 14 writerly drinking holes.

“These literary pubs hosted a lot of violence,” I observed, reading from my guidebook about Anthony Burgess and his wife, Lynne, who had witnessed a razor gang fight in 1943 at the Duke of York. That event is said to have inspired A Clockwork Orange. John Dryden, who wrote satirical poetry that lampooned the gentry, was “nearly done to death by rogues,” according to a plaque about the Lamb and Flag, which had already earned the nickname Bucket of Blood for staging bare-knuckle fights. (Dryden also said people should not end sentences with prepositions – a rule I agree with.) 

Later in the day, the pubs began filling up with the after-work crowd. We ate dinner at the teeming Anchor, said to be a Shakespeare hangout since it’s just down the street from the (recreated) Globe Theatre where the Bard’s plays are still performed. Then we ambled through Southwark streets to The George, bulging with 20-something-year-olds rather than Dickens’ or Shakespeare’s drinking buddies. Hailing from 1540, it’s London’s only remaining galleried coaching inn (a place where carriage drivers exchanged horses for fresh teams; the equivalent of a gas station today).  

Stories about drunken writers abound. Dylan Thomas’ name crops up as a willing participant in roistering parties at literary pubs. Thomas drank at the Marquis of Granby with T.S. Eliot, met his wife at the Wheatsheaf and proposed to her that night, and lost his manuscript for Under Milk Wood at the French House. He held up the bar at the Fitzroy Tavern with Virginia Wolff, George Bernard Shaw, and George Orwell, with whom he worked at the nearby BBC. One time, Thomas “stopped dead in the middle of a live radio broadcast to announce: ‘Somebody’s boring me. I think it’s me.’”

Dickens also seemed to drink everywhere; I concluded that a literary pub can’t really call itself that if Dickens didn’t down some booze there. His haunts included the Pillars of Hercules (mentioned in A Tale of Two Cities; Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes also imbibe there), the Lamb and Flag, the Dog and Duck, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, The George, the Lamb…  

Orwell, who allegedly threw up over the bar in the Wheatsheaf, apparently celebrated at the Dog and Duck in 1945 when the American Book of the Month club featured Animal Farm.   

Our top 3 favourite literary pubs were:

• The Lamb and Flag for its plea for mercy on the boozy man and comfortable feel – somewhat like an old shoe. But maybe Dave the Broom influenced me.
• The Fitzroy Tavern for its décor: mosaic tiles adorning the entryway, as well as beautiful hand-etched glass in the doors and window.
• Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for its history stretching back to 1538. The 1666 Great Fire of London destroyed the original, but it was rebuilt in 1667. Since then, it has operated under 15 sovereigns (now 16 with King Charles III), starting with King Charles II. No one blinked an eye when we wandered in to look around the many cozy rooms. Narrow stairs led down into a rabbit’s warren of pub rooms on several basement levels, with the vaulted ceilings getting progressively lower. I laughed at a sign: “Gentlemen only served in this bar.” The list of literary patrons is one of the longest: Dickens, Samuel Johnson, P.G. Wodehouse, Mark Twain, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Samuel Pepys, Arthur Conan Doyle, W.B. Yeats, Voltaire, and Winston Churchill. Plus Princess Margaret.

Using information readily available online, I cut and pasted to create my own literary pub guidebook. Then Google Maps helped me plot the walking route.

But we saw more than just literary pubs in London.

The British Library – the world’s largest – stirred my book-loving soul. In the Treasures gallery, I went from one glass case to another marvelling at each impressively old and important document. Shakespeare’s First Folio! The Magna Carta! A Gutenberg Bible! Beatles’ hand-written lyrics scribbled on the back of an envelope! Music by Mozart!

The library houses about 150 million items, some dating back 4,000 years. The collection includes not just books (such as original copies of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Jane Eyre), but also maps, sacred texts from all religions, historical letters, lyrics, and musical scores. Displays are rotated so you don’t know exactly what you’ll see – all the more reason to visit again.

Treasures abound at the British Library: Shakespeare’s First Folio, followed by (in order) a 1455 Gutenberg Bible (one of about 180 copies printed on the first movable-type printing press), a Hebrew Bible, and a gold-bedecked Qur’an from Egypt in 1305-06.

I kept putting my camera away, thinking “that’s enough photos,” but then the next display case would reveal another rare treasure.

• Florence Nightingale’s hand-drawn diagram about causes of mortality in the Crimean War in 1858.
• A handwritten draft of Middlemarch, by George Eliot (pen name for Mary Ann Evans).
• The 1846 sonnet “I never gave a lock of hair away” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
• Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, from 1410.
• A letter from Ghandi to Lord Irwin, Viceroy of India, in 1930.
• A letter from Queen Victoria to Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone in 1870 supporting his view against rights for women.
• Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing about the geometry of transformations, 1517-18. “His explanation breaks off with an ‘etcetera,’ followed by a rare domestic detail: ‘Because the soup is getting cold’,” read the description.

The Magna Carta (well protected inside a glass case that prevents decent photos) is affixed with the king’s seal. The 1215 document established many rights, including the rights of widows to not re-marry.

The Magna Carta (Latin for Great Charter) has its own little display room. Why is it so important? It established, for the very first time, the incredible principle that no one was above the law, not even the king. It became the cornerstone for the British constitution and others that followed, including the Canadian and American constitutions and legal systems.

“In the eight centuries since 1215, it has come to be seen as a guarantor of individual liberties and it has evolved into a global system of freedoms and rights,” said a display panel. When you think about it, that’s exciting stuff!

I hadn’t realized there were four versions. The initial version, signed in 1215, was annulled by the Pope. Subsequent versions were signed in 1216 and 1217. The fourth, signed in 1225 and issued by King Henry III, became the definitive version. The copy we saw had been kept at Lacock Abbey from 1225 to the 1940s, when it was wrapped, placed in a box, put into a metal container and buried under the abbey floor to safeguard it during the Second World War. In 1945 it was donated to the British Library.

William Marshal, First Earl of Pembroke (left and bottom right), and his eldest son (top right) helped negotiate and protect the Magna Carta. Their effigies lie in the round Temple Church.

We learned more about the Magna Carta when we visited the round Temple Church, built about 1163 by and for the Knights Templar. (They protected pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land as part of the Crusades.) Two of the knights – William Marshal, First Earl of Pembroke, and his eldest son, also William, helped negotiate and protect the Magna Carta, ensuring its survival. Think about it – these two dudes lying on the floor in front of me helped establish rights and freedoms that protect us today. We owe them.

We also followed narrow lanes to find the house of Samuel Johnson – famous for compiling A Dictionary of the English Language. Published in 1755, it was the very first English dictionary. Sadly the house, now a museum, was closed. Bill rang the doorbell, but Johnson didn’t answer. He was probably in a nearby pub, quite possibly Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, considering how to spell “lush.”

Walking along Fleet Street, the former haunt of journalists, we saw a brick building with the names of former newspapers emblazoned on the side. Down a side lane, we found St. Bride’s Church, nicknamed “The Cathedral of Fleet Street” and “The Printer’s Church” because it’s been home to newspaper reporters since 1500 when a printing press was set up on church property. This wasn’t our day: the church was also closed so I couldn’t verify that the pews have the names of journalists inscribed on them.

Fleet Street also features the Punch Tavern, named in honour of Punch magazine and its many journalist customers who held editorial meetings and penned many of their witty, satirical stories while drinking in the pub. (Not a whole lot different than the National Press Club in Ottawa, back in the 1980s when I worked as a journalist on Parliament Hill.)  

Of course, all that writerly inspiration just made me want to shop for books. We stopped in at Stanfords and Waterstones bookstores to peruse the modern wares, as well as a Greenwich Market book stall, where I bought an old copy of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot.

And then…mecca! At Canary Wharf, we stumbled upon a Moleskine store – an entire store selling beautiful journals with the pocket in the back, the ribbon bookmark, and the elastic to hold the cover closed. Moleskines are my favourite journals. I found a gorgeous one with Van Gogh irises on the cover. Stupidly expensive but it was a must-buy situation. It took many days for me to summon the courage to write in it.

Our literary pub crawl inspired me to buy old and new books, plus a new Moleskine journal.

We’d been to other London literary shrines before: Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, Platform 9¾ and Leadenhall Market (with our Harry-Potter-fan daughter Rachel), 221B Baker Street, and the Globe Theatre. And there’s always more to visit in the future, such as the Charles Dickens Museum.

But for me, pubs were the lifeblood of literary London. I imagined all those great writers sitting exactly where I was, perhaps on that very stool, penning wise words or discussing weighty subjects with fellow writers. I entertained these romantic thoughts, knowing full well that, in reality, there were probably some pretty gritty times spent in dark dingy pubs with a bunch of slobbering alcoholics picking fights. Ah, cognitive dissonance.

We concluded that the ideal literary pub features comfortable seats, inglenooks, scuffed uneven floors, dim lighting, decorative signs, an ‘and’ in the name, outside ledges to hold drinks for standing patrons, a location on a quiet alley, no loud music, many draught choices, and décor that includes at least three of the following: wood panelling, etched glass, stained glass, exposed stone or brick, brass footrails and/or overhead glass-racks, and historic photos.

Back at the Lamb and Flag, the bare knuckles of local businesswomen and men seemed occupied holding their draughts outside in the May sunshine. Nary a sign of bare-knuckle skirmishes. While we waited inside for a Fullers Extra Special Bitters (for Bill) and a Cornish Orchards cider (for me), I channeled the literary vibes and scribbled in my journal.

“Are you feeling very writerish?” asked Bill.

I grinned. “Definitely!”

We visited London in May 2023. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.