DR. JOHNSON declared a tavern seat "the throne of human felicity." The Frenchman Hilaire Belloc, who spent his life in England, said: "When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves. For you will have lost the last of England." A good pub is a ready-made party, a home away from home, a club anyone can join. Some British pubs began as simple meeting places, some as coaching inns -- hostelries where stagecoaches stopped for the night for fodder, bed and stable. Generally these were larger, and had a secondary pub at the back for ostlers, farriers and other riffraff. In Oxford, which has some pubs -- like the Bear, on Blue Boar Lane, and the Mitre, on the High Street -- that date back to the 1200's, many of the names echo the Middle Ages. The White Hart (a stag, Richard II's heraldic emblem), the Kings Arms (named for James I, during whose reign neighboring Wadham College was founded), The Bear, the Wheatsheaf: all are names that call up a past of knights, farms and forests.
A good pub is a ready-made party, a home away from home, a club anyone can join. Some British pubs began as simple meeting places, some as coaching inns -- hostelries where stagecoaches stopped for the night for fodder, bed and stable. Generally these were larger, and had a secondary pub at the back for ostlers, farriers and other riffraff.
In Oxford, which has some pubs -- like the Bear, on Blue Boar Lane, and the Mitre, on the High Street -- that date back to the 1200's, many of the names echo the Middle Ages. The White Hart (a stag, Richard II's heraldic emblem), the Kings Arms (named for James I, during whose reign neighboring Wadham College was founded), The Bear, the Wheatsheaf: all are names that call up a past of knights, farms and forests.
They left out the part about how these pubs are run entirely by American slave labor--about 6 dollars an hour w/out tips, I seem to recall. Oh, Lamb and Flag...with your tasty half-price fish and chips. I couldn't quit you. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
my particular memory are the stuffed armchairs in the Irish pub on Botley road. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
I never liked the King's Arms, only went there because other people would want to. The journalist seems to capture the spirit of the place: always full, a kind of crossroads, a lot of brashness and pretentious conversation. The Turf was more laid back. It had a mina bird that used to scream your ears off if you had the bad luck to have to sit by its cage.
