Tag: Shakespeare’s Local

| Pubs, Shakespeare’s Local, Southwark, The George Inn, The Tabard

Shakespeare’s Real Local?

A tantalising new scrap of evidence about the bard’s drinking habits has emerged.

The Tabard Inn, Borough High Street

When I wrote Shakespeare’s Local I upset some readers because I failed to prove the contention in the title of the book – that William Shakespeare drank in the George Inn in Borough High Street.

At a time when most people were illiterate, very little got written down. Information about Shakespeare’s life is so scant there’s not even really any evidence of where he lived when he was in London, let alone where he enjoyed a pint. When I wrote the book, there was not one single mention of Shakespeare ever having been recorded as being in any pub, ever.

And yet we know he did live in London for many years, even if we don’t know exactly where. And we know that unless he was a very unusual man for his time, if he lived in London he went to the pub in London. Because everyone did. Beer was safer to drink than water, and you had to go to the pub and get it. And if you wanted to sit back and relax with friends, there was nowhere else for most people to do that other than the pub.

In the absence of evidence, you can only make informed guesses – just because there’s no proof of something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, so you have to construct the most likely scenario based on the soundest possible assumptions.

My argument in the book was that Shakespeare definitely worked in Southwark, where the Globe Theatre was, so it’s likely he lived close by – most historians believe he did. If he lived and worked in Southwark, he would have visited Southwark’s pubs. We know he was aware of the White Hart pub on Borough High Street, because he set a scene in one of his plays there. The White Hart stood next to the George, so he must have been aware of the George too. The George and its immediate neighbours were the most famous pubs in London at the time, which we know thanks to the meticulous work of John Stow, a contemporary of Shakespeare’s. It’s thought Shakespeare lived in the area for ten years. If he was going to pubs most days, it’s far more likely that he did drink in the George at least occasionally than that he didn’t.

On this, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (and the 452nd anniversary of his birth) I would love to be able to announce that new evidence has come to light that Shakespeare really did drink in the George. But in all my research on the place, it never quite works out like that.

I was indebted to an American academic called Martha Carlin when I was writing my book. She’s done more research on medieval Southwark than anyone else, and she recently contacted me to tell me that she’s found the first and so far only record of someone claiming to see Shakespeare in a specific pub.

Of course, it’s not the George. It’s the George’s next door neighbour. It always bloody is.

The White Hart stood to the left of the George on Borough High Street. Not only did Shakespeare write about it, Dickens used it as the location of a crucial scene in the Pickwick Papers. To the right of the George stood the Tabard. This was the inn which Chaucer used as the starting point for the Canterbury Tales. At the time he wrote those stories, he could have picked any of several inns lining Borough High Street. He could have chosen the George. Instead he chose its next door neighbour, immortalising the Tabard for ever as the birthplace of English literature.

The three greatest names in English letters, then, each of them associated strongly with the old inns of Borough High Street, each of them making their strongest link with the inns either side of the George.

Now, Martha writes, the words of an anonymous actuary writing in 1643 have been unearthed, describing “Some notes for my Perambulation in and round ye Citye of London for six miles and Remnants of divers worthie things and men”.

The author announces that his survey is intended “only to notice those places and things that have been passed by or littled [sic] mentiond [sic] by those greate Antiquaries that have written of this noble Citye and ye which places are fast ruining as the Tabard Inne and ye many houses of Priesthood old Monuments Halls Palaces and Houses of its greate Citizens and Lords and may be useful to searchers of Antiquitye in time to come.”

The Tabard Inn, like many of London’s great landmarks, is by now falling into ruin – so we learn that the lamenting the passing of great pubs is nothing new.When he gets to the Tabard, our anonymous correspondent writes, “Ye Tabard I find to have been ye resort Mastere Will Shakspear Sir Sander Duncombe Lawrence Fletcher Richard Burbage Ben Jonson and ye rest of their roystering associates in King Jameses time as in ye lange room they have cut their names on ye Pannels.”

So graffiting the pub was nothing new either!
Unfortunately, Shakespeare’s vandalism of the Tabard was lost when the inn burnt down along with the George and the White Hart, in the great fire of Southwark in 1676. All three were rebuilt the following year. The George is the only one that has survived until today.
So the Tabard – already already famous as Chaucer’s Local – now has a far better claim to be Shakespeare’s Local than its neighbour.
But thanks to this find, we now know that Shakespeare really did go to the pub in Borough High Street. Did he and his fellow ‘roysterers’ ever do a crawl of the great inns? Did he graffiti the George as well as the Tabard? Most likely, we’ll never know. The idea of the group of players carving their names into the panels suggests, to me at any rate, that they were regular visitors who wanted to leave their mark. It makes perfect sense that Shakespeare would choose the Tabard because of its associations with Chaucer, placing himself in a great literary tradition. But did he only ever go to the Tabard, and never to the pub next door? I find that hard to believe.
The point is, the George is the only one of those great inns to have survived the coming of the railways. The Tabard, as well as the White Hart, fell into ruin because they were up for sale for years and no one wanted to buy them. By the time the Tabard was finally demolished, it looked like this:
The Tabard, 1870s
The George was the only one of the great inns to escape this fate, the only one that’s still there to write about and to visit. The main reason it did so was thanks to an extraordinary landlady who used every means at her disposal to keep it going as the inns either side were being pulled down – including telling outrageous lies and exaggerations about its associations with Dickens and Shakespeare to attract tourists and build fascination with this last survivor.
Let’s just say I make no apologies for having sympathy with her aim.

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“Events, dear boy, events!” (As Harold Macmillan probably didn’t say)

Early
autumn is busy at the best of times and I have a book coming out in October.
Here’s what’s keeping me on the road and off the streets for the next couple
months.
FRIDAY
23RD AUGUST: APG PLANNING RAMBLE IN SOUTHWARK
This one goes out to all the ad industry planners doing the job I used to do. I’m leading a meander of planners around Southwark tomorrow lunchtime, discussing Shakespeare’s Local and ending up in The George. Contact Sarah Newman at the APG to book a place if you’re interested.
SATURDAY
24TH AUGUST: HOPS AND GLORY AT THE HOPS AND GLORY!
4PM
I feel a bit bad that a pub named after George Orwell – one of the greatest ever English writers – was changed to the name of one of my books. But not too bad. The Hops & Glory is an excellent pub at the top of Essex Road in Islington. This Bank Holiday Weekend it’s having an IPA festival, and they invited me down to do a talk on the history of possible the greatest ever beer style. I’ll be talking, reading from Hops & Glory, signing books and tasting beers.
(After my talk, I’ll be checking out two other excellent Bank Holiday events in pubs that are walking distance from the Hops & Glory, purely as punter: a weekend-long cider festival at The Alma on Newington Green, and a celebration of East London Breweries at the Duke of Wellington on Balls Pond Road.)
THURSDAY 29TH AUGUST: THE HISTORY OF BRITAIN THROUGH BEER, WITH MEANTIME BREWERY
Meantime’s Old Brewery hosts a monthly beer dinner where you get to taste a stunning array of beers bound together by a loose theme. I was delighted to be asked back to do a new one after a successful IPA dinner at the end of last year. The theme for this one is the role of beer throughout British history, and a look at the different forces that have shaped the development of beer, and the way beer has in turn influenced the development of society. The beers on the menu are a symbolic, rather than literal, representation of key styles over time, starting from the present day and moving back in time. Here’s the menu in full:
A History of Britain According to Beer
The Old Brewery Beer and Food Night Menu
  
Introduction
Meantime London Pilsner
Timothy Taylor Landlord
Starter
Smoked eel, carrot and beetroot salad, horseradish
cream
Hobson’s Mild
Main
Beef Wellington, Welsh potato cakes, ale gravy
Redchurch Great Eastern IPA
Dessert
Apple pie with custard & vanilla ice cream
Meantime London Porter
Cheese
A selection of British cheese with beer chutney &
crackers
St Bernardus Pater C
  
To finish
Kernel Export Stout
Full details and ticket booking are available at the Meantime Old Brewery website.
SATURDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER:
WORLD’S BEST CIDER AT ABERGAVENNY FOOD FESTIVAL
The ‘Glastonbury of Food Festivals’ (copyright: the entire foodie media) has become a bit of a regular fixture for me and every year it’s so good I decide that I’m emigrating to Wales before subsequently sobering up. This year Bill Bradshaw and I will be talking about World’s Best Cider and sampling a few different ciders from around the world. 
Tickets for this event have already sold out! Returns may be available. But the next day, Bill will be interviewing one of my favourite cider makers – Simon Day from Once Upon A Tree. Simon’s ciders are quite unlike anything you might imagine, recalling the seventeenth century tradition of Herefordshire fine cyder. I’ll be in the front row holding my glass up. Tickets are available here.

THURSDAY 17TH OCTOBER:
WORLD’S BEST CIDER LAUNCH!
The book hits the shelves! We’ll be doing various events around the country. Details will go up here when confirmed. 

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Great news for the weak-wristed and those searching for that last-minute father’s day gift!

My fourth book, Shakespeare’s Local, is out now in paperback!
This new edition has the same text and pictures as the old one, but it has a different cover, is lighter to hold, and has the words ‘As read on BBC Radio 4’ on the front.
If you didn’t buy it for your father or pub-loving hubby for Christmas, you can now atone for that oversight by buying it for Father’s Day!
This is less a beer book, more a social history of one pub in one part of London that in turn tells a history of day-to-day life from the perspective of the bar stool. Pubs have endured for a thousand years, and while the basic principle and function of them is amazingly constant over time, how that is expressed changes constantly. 
The four sets of legs standing at the bar together illustrate the variety of people who have enjoyed a pint at the George Inn, Southwark, over the centuries it has stood as a living, breathing boozer. Any great pub has colourful individuals propping up the bar. Over the centuries the George has played host to villains, rogues and royalty, welcoming Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Taylor, Beyonce and the Stuart era’s finest Fart Poet, and hosted a lock-in for Princess Margaret with the Bishop of Southwark.

The Guardian said the book was ‘engaging and irreverent… brimming with fascinating stories and forgotten characters’. The Wall Street Journal said while it was ‘an entertaining stream of facts and stories’, but that its author was ‘an amateur… hucksterish, juvenile and occasionally vulgar… at first, pleasingly engaging and then, alas, more and more tiresome.’ 

The only element of this that jars is that the reviewer says it as if she thinks it’s a bad thing.

 

Available now in all good bookshops.

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“Shakespeare’s Pub” – and my other books – now available in America

Good morning America!

Over the years I’ve been asked by many North American readers of this blog if my books are available in the United States. As of now, they all are!

Today the first ever US-bespoke edition of one of my books is published. My last book, Shakespeare’s Local, hits American shelves today as Shakespeare’s Pub: A Barstool History of London As Seen Through the Windows of Its Oldest Pub – The George Inn. (I’ve noticed on my trips to the States that you guys LOVE a long subtitle).

It’s published by St Martin’s Press, the US partner of my UK publisher, Pan Macmillan, and there’s a bit more information about them and the book on their website, along with a really quite lovely gallery of the photos and illustrations used in the book.

The thing about your long subtitles is that it kind of tells you everything you need to know about the book (there’s actually a riff in Shakespeare’s Pub about the Stuart-era fashion for even longer subtitles and their similarity to those movie trailers that give away the whole plot.) But I’ll elaborate a little for those who don’t know.

The pub has been hailed as ‘the primordial cell of British life’. For centuries, pubs have provided the glue that holds communities together. They are more than shops that sell drink, different from bars in that people feel a greater sense of ownership and belonging than in any other commercial establishment.

Today the great British pub ranks second or third in any survey of what visitors from abroad wish to experience when the go to the UK. And yet the pub is in crisis, with an average of 26 closing their doors for good every single week.

Against this backdrop, I wanted to tell the story of ‘one pub and everyone who has ever drank in it’, and the George emerged as the best candidate thanks to its unique combination of survival and location. There were perhaps more significant pubs historically, but they are no longer with us. And there are older pubs, but one reason they have survived is that they are tucked away in corners of the country where nothing much happens – meaning there is a less interesting story to tell.

The story of the George involves the three leading lights of English literature – not just Shakespeare, but also Chaucer and Dickens. The latter was definitely a regular at the George, but I have to warn readers that there is no firm documentary evidence that either Chaucer or Shakespeare definitely drank in the George. In Shakespeare’s case that’s because there’s hardly any documentary evidence of him doing anything at all. But circumstantial evidence that he drank in the George is very strong indeed.

As well as these guys, the story involves a wide-ranging cast of villains, prostitutes, beggars, thieves, merchants, brewers, highwaymen, prime ministers and royalty – making the George the perfect case study of the democracy and inclusiveness of the pub – qualities that make any obituary for pubs very premature indeed.

Shakespeare’s Local been my most successful book launch in the UK to date, having been serialised on BBC Radio 4 and included in several ‘best picks’ of books of 2012. It’s a book about pubs, but it’s my least beery book so far – it’s much more about broader social history, and aims to please a broader audience.

(Note to UK readers: the only things that have changed for the American edition are the cover and title and, I guess, maybe some Americanized spellings. In any and all other respects this is the same book as Shakespeare’s Local).

My previous books were way more beery. Last time I looked, aged ago, they were not available anywhere in the US, but I’m delighted to discover that all three are now listed on amazon.com at non-import prices, in paperback and kindle editions. For anyone not familiar with them, here is a brief recap:

My first book looks at the history of beer (and pubs) mainly from a UK perspective.  It’s still my bestselling book overall as it keeps up steady business as an easy, accessible, general introduction to the world of beer. If you’re a beer geek looking for something more thorough and rigorous, track down anything by Martyn Cornell, or check out the Oxford Companion to Beer. What I tried to do here is discuss beer with both the irreverence and respect it deserves, offering entertainment as well as education to anyone who enjoys a good beer, but still packing in enough historical fact and trivia so that even the most knowledgeable beer geek might find something knew not just about beer, but the context it sat in, why it was there and how important it was, and still remains. This edition was updated in 2010. When people ask me which of my books is best, I tell them this is the most popular.

Breaking out of my UK perspective, for my second book I went on a world tour of important beer drinking nations. At a time when the idea of ‘craft beer’ was really happening in the US but wasn’t that well known in the UK, I compared different brewing traditions, beer styles and ways of drinking, from Europe to the US, from Portland to Prague, from Milwaukee to Melbourne, Australia, including Paddys’ Day in Ireland, Oktoberfest in Munich, and around 500 bars across thirteen countries. When people ask me which is my best book, I tell them this is the funniest.

India Pale Ale is the flagbearer of the craft beer movement, the most popular beer style among beer geeks and brewers. Everyone involved in that scene knows the legend of the beer brewed to be shipped to British garrisons in India, and the supposed transformation it underwent on the voyage. But no one knew what really happened. My third book charts my attempt to take a cask of traditionally brewed IPA from Burton-on-Trent to Calcutta by its traditional sea route around the Cape of Good Hope for the first time in 140 years. It cuts between the most detailed history of IPA there is, and my own journey on a variety of vessels. It didn’t quite go according to plan. When people ask me which is my best book, I tell them this is the best-written.

So that’s how I spent the last ten years of my life. I’m very proud to have all four books now on sale in the US and I hope American readers can cope with the slang and English vernacular* and enjoy them as much as my British readers.

Cheers, America!

*And the irritating over-reliance on footnotes. 

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Telling Stories and Drinking Beer

It’s less than six weeks now until the launch of my new book, Shakespeare’s Local.

I had some very exciting news about the book yesterday, which I can’t reveal until contracts have been signed in a few days’ time.  It’s also been confirmed that the book will have a US edition some time next year.

But books don’t sell themselves these days, so I’m gearing up for various events up and down the country where I’ll be reading, talking about the book, and doing beer tastings.

Here’s the schedule so far:

Saturday 29th/Sunday 30th September – Taste Cumbria, Cockermouth
At 3pm this afternoon I’ll be tasting a world of Cumbrian beers as part of this excellent food and drink festival, and maybe doing the odd reading.  I’ll be repeating the tasting again at 1pm tomorrow.

Monday 1st October – Beer tasting mash up at the Manchester Food and Drink Festival
They asked me to do an event.  I said yeah, I could do a tasting of local beers, or beers that match with my books, or a beer and cheese pairing maybe?  Or what about beer and music matching?  It’s the right city for it.  And they said, they all sound great – can you do the whole lot?  So I’ll be attempting to weave together four completely different events at 7pm on Monday in the festival hub.

Tuesday 9th October – Ilkley Literary Festival
I had a blast here with Hops & Glory a few years ago.  Can’t wait to go back and unveil the new show I’ve put together around Shakespeare’s Local – it’ll be a multimedia extravaganza I tell you!  And it’s already sold out! No pressure then…

Thursday 8th November – Official Book Launch!
Finally hits the shops. I may have a celebratory beer at the George.

Monday 12th November – Corbridge
Details to follow

Tuesday 13th November – Urmston
Details to follow

Wednesday 14th November – Caught by the River at Rough Trade East
I love Caught by the River.  I love Rough Trade East.  Thrilled to be doing an event with them.

Wednesday 21st November – Richmond Literary Festival
An event in a beer shop.  And not just any beer shop – realeale.com’s HQ is beer paradise.

There will be many more events to follow, including a few at the George itself in the run-up to Christmas.

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Yeeeessssss, it’s in(n)!

The George Inn, Borough High St, SE1. A while ago.

After a couple of false starts (or false endings I suppose) I’m back in the real world.  On Thursday I pressed ‘send’ on the manuscript of my new book, and this weekend my editor becomes the third person in the world to read it (after me and the Beer Widow).  From here it’s full steam ahead with edits (hopefully not too many) cover designs, bound proofs out to reviewers and so on, leading up to the launch later this year.

I started this book almost a year ago.  Then in October I had my laptop stolen.  It wasn’t backed up (it is now) and I lost every last bit of work I’d done on the book.  I started making my notes again from scratch on 7th October.  I sent the book off on 1st March.  I hope I never have to work to that kind of timetable again, but I think I got away with it.

It’s been confirmed that the book will be called SHAKESPEARE’S LOCAL: Five Centuries of History Seen From One Extraordinary Pub.  It tells the story of the George Inn, Southwark, South London, and everything that has happened in it, to it and around it, and the people who have eaten, drunk, stayed, worked, performed and fought there.

It’s not really a beer book as such – it’s a bit of a departure on that score (though there is one chapter that centres on one of the most famous breweries the world has ever seen).  But it is a book about pubs – not just this one pub, but all pubs, especially inns.  These days we use words like ‘inn’, ‘tavern’, ‘alehouse’ and ‘pub’ interchangeably, but at one time the differences were so stark they were enshrined in law.  One aspect of the book is the story of how inns were essentially the lynchpins for Britain’s entire economy, facilitating the movement of goods, money and people that enabled both the Industrial Revolution and the growth of a mercantile class.  Before we had town halls, municipal buildings, assembly rooms, theatres and concert halls, the inn was the only building in town with large meeting rooms and spaces, and it performed all these functions.

It’s also the story of Southwark – an extraordinary town that was once the centre of the world.  London Bridge was the only bridge across the Thames from Roman times until 1750.  Anything coming to the capital from the south east or Continental Europe came up Borough High Street and past the George – that’s why this pub was just one of twenty or so inns along a half mile stretch of road, along with innumerable alehouses and taverns.  The bottleneck across the bridge meant many people simply stayed in Southwark.  It was just outside London’s jurisdiction and the Citys’ laws didn’t apply, so Southwark became home to nonconformists of every stripe, fugitives and refugees from across the world, villains, rogues, whores and wasters, most of whom popped in for a pint (all except the puritans, who dismissed pubs as the ‘blockhouses of the Devil’.)

The story of the George is the story of the last survivor of these great inns.  It was never the biggest, most famous, most beautiful or important – even though it was big, famous, beautiful and important.  Chaucer chose the inn next door to the south as his start point for the Canterbury Tales.  Both Dickens and Shakespeare chose the inn next door to the north as the setting for key scenes in their respective works.  But they all knew the George, and the George is the one that survived, carrying the legacy of what was once the most important street of pubs in the world.

The story of the George is also the story of some bizarre characters who once drunk there.  There’s Sir John Mennis, Comptroller of Charles II’s Royal Navy and inventory of a literary genre I’ve chosen to call Stuart-Era Fart Poetry.  There’s John Taylor, the Water Poet, who once rowed from London to the Isle of Sheppey in a boat made from paper with oars of salt cod tied to sticks.  There’s Shakespeare, Dickens, Chaucer, Dick Turpin, the Sugababes, Samuel Pepys, Philip ‘the most miserable man in the world’ Stubbes, Samuel Johnson, a monkey riding a horse, and possibly the greatest pub landlady who ever lived.

But the main character is the pub itself – just a pub, and so much more, like all pubs are.  When you see what it’s been through, the survival of the George makes a mockery of anyone who says pubs are dying out.

That’s the gist of what I told my publisher’s sales force when I had to present the book to them a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn’t easy – I had to follow a debut novelist whose book is already tipped for great things and is in discussions about movie rights – and Rastamouse.

Wha’ g’wan? I share a publisher with this mouse.

The creators of Rastamouse had them a-rockin’ and a-rhymin’, grown men and women squealing with delight.  “Follow that,” said my publisher.  I tried.  It seemed to go down well.

So well, in fact, that they moved the publication date.  Shakespeare’s Local will now be published on 8th November, right in the middle of the peak Christmas book buying period, competing with comedians’ memoirs, ‘Katie’ ‘Price’ ‘novels’ and glossy cookbooks.  The cover design hasn’t been finalised yet, but even from early designs it’s going to look like a very nice present to buy someone.

So now, finally, I’m back to blogging.  I’ve got loads to write about as I reacquaint myself with the beer world and start leaving the house again.

I hope you all played nice while I was gone.  It’s good to be back.

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Introducing “Shakespeare’s Local” – my next book!

The George Inn, Southwark, Late nineteenth century

So, at the end of last week, my agent shook hands on a very nice offer from the wonderful Pan Macmillan for my follow-up to the Beer Trilogy!

It’s been four years now since I signed the deal on my last book, Hops & Glory. That’s so long ago, I had only written three entries on this blog at the time, and most current UK beer blogs were still twinkles in a beer geek’s eye.

For the past two years I’ve been trying to develop ideas that move on a little from beer. After three books that look at history, travel and complete obsession, I’ve done all I can in book form for the time being – or at least, the kind of books I write.

I have no intention of stopping or even slowing down in beer journalism and blogging, and there may also be other books – more conventional style drinks books – in the offing. But all the ideas I’ve had for narrative, story-driven, personal journey type books in beer feel like they subscribe to the law of diminishing returns. If I ever reach the stage where tens of thousands of people are prepared to buy a book just because it has my name on the cover, I’ll definitely revisit various ideas for more epic beer journeys, but at the moment there’s simply not a big enough market to justify the expense and time commitment they require.

So after the epic travel of the last two books, I wanted to do something that would keep me closer to home – but that’s still grand in scope in its own way. I’d also like to do a book where I don’t spend the entire advance – and more – on plane tickets and boat voyages. And finally, I wanted to do something that could extend my growing interest in social history beyond beer, but still keep one foot firmly in the pub.

To tick all these boxes, my editor has been urging me for months to write a very detailed social history of one pub, through the ages, and everyone who drank in it, everything that’s happened to it. Fine, but what pub?

The answer hit us just before Christmas – and has been taking shape since then.

The George Inn in Southwark, south London, is London’s last remaining galleried coaching inn – one of the few left in the country. The current building has stood there since 1686, when it was rebuilt after fire. The inn dates back before then at least to 1452, and probably earlier. Its vast network was once home to the hop trade from Kent up to London.

For centuries, when London Bridge was the only river crossing into the city, the gates were locked at night, so travellers to and from the south would set off from and arrive at Southwark.  By Hewnry VIII’s time Borough High Street was one long line of inns. The Tabard – Chaucer’s start point for the Canterbury Tales – was right next door. Neighbouring on the other side was the White Hart, mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry VI, and featuring heavily in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. Dickens was also a regular at the George, and mentions it by name in Little Dorritt. And Shakespeare – who lived just down the road for a few years – almost certainly performed plays in the inn-yard before the Globe was built.

So you have the three great cornerstones of the English literary canon in or near the pub. But more than that, the constancy of the George as everything around it has changed (none of the other twenty-odd Southwark inns now survives) makes it the perfect vehicle to look at six centuries of social history. As you stand on the ancient wooden balconies now, you can see London’s latest phallus, the Shard, rising up in front if you. And that kind of freaks me out. When Dickens wrote about this place 175 years ago this year, he was already being nostalgic about it. Imagine that!

Imagine all the people who have drunk here – not just Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Dwight D Eisenhower, Princess Margaret, Gary Cooper and other Hollywood stars who made a special pilgrimage, not just the long gone society of London ale conners who used to bless the new season’s ale here, not just the Thespians who staged Shakespeare plays in the inn-yard all the way up to the 1970s, or the ghost of the old landlady who haunts the upper floors. Imagine all the ordinary market traders, hop merchants, bear baiters, prostitutes from the nearby Southwark ‘stews’, clergymen, highwaymen, theatre goers, waggoners, gentlemen and rogues who’ve passed their time in this building. What did they eat? Drink? Wear? Talk about?

That’s the pitch.

I’m writing it intensively through the rest of 2011, hoping for a release in 2012, in time for the Olympics.

And hopefully, it won’t be the only book I’ll be working on! But more on that later, if my other project, in collaboration with a very talented photographer, also comes off.

Anyway, if the blogging slips, that’s why. If you want me, I’ll probably be in the Southwark Local History library.

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