General

Having walked across muddy fields for the previous hour from Foxton train station, it was very welcoming to push open the shiny red door of the Queen’s Head within the village of Newton in Cambridgeshire at 5pm – official evening opening time. Unlike many pubs, it chooses to stick with the old opening times –…

Since arriving in London from Yorkshire to work in the City in the late 1980s I’ve navigated my way around the capital by pubs. One of the first areas I investigated was the smart enclave of Belgravia and one of my favourite pubs remains The Grenadier, which I’d just visited before I read The London…

Barnes might only be a mere ten miles from my house but it represents quite a trek across London, so I very rarely find myself in that part of town. But when I heard about the return of The Great Sausage Roll Off after its two-year break during the pandemic, I knew I had to…

What on earth was I doing here? I was sitting quietly on a banquette opposite a long, implacably solid wooden bar counter behind which an elegantly carved, equally imposing wooden bar-back glistened with shelves of whisky bottles. Welcome to the Grill, a solid-looking boozer slotted into a granite-faced terrace on Aberdeen’s Union Street. I recall…

It would be a good quiz question for those people who think they know a thing or two about beer – what do Henderson’s Relish, Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire puds, Ronseal and Seabrook crisps have in common? The answer is they are all brands that have worked with Northern Monk Brewing Co. in Leeds to produce…

Before travelling to Norway in the summer for a family holiday, warnings came from all directions about the extravagant cost of beer. This proved to be exactly the case as I typically paid around the £10 mark for the equivalent of a pint – but it was not a shock as such because it is…

The Blue Posts pub in Soho has always been a special place for me as one of the rare unchangedboozers in the beating heart of the capital. Despite much around it changing, especially on BerwickStreet where it has historically been the market traders’ pub, it remains resolutely a must-visit forpeople looking for a bit of…

We travel and ride with the rhyme of time, in search of both new and familiar scenes, with few guesses about what comes next unless it is another glass of beer. Writing these words in a Schaerbeek coffee shop that also sells beer (a glass of dry-hopped Hommelbier if you must know), once again I…

The Nag’s Head, The Grenadier and The Star Tavern in London’s smart Belgravia area have comprised my favourite concise pub crawl since I first came to the capital to work in the late 1980s. Every now and again I feel compelled to retrace my steps along the compact mews properties on Kinnerton Street and the…