Pints of view: Professor Phil Howell

AROUND 25 per cent of pubs across the UK have shut since 2000 – a worrying trend for an institution that holds a special place in our national psyche.

Why this has happened, and why it might matter is the topic of a new book by Cambridge professor, Phil Howell.

Prof Howell’s field is historical geography – and his book, simply entitled Pub, takes the reader through the story of the pub as an object: a place whose history is obscured by myth and nostalgia.

He deconstructs the pub, takes apart what makes a pub, and considers its cornerstone position in our society.

The dramatic decline – and Camden has seen a wave of closures over the past 25 years – is down to a number of obvious trends: the rise of cheap alcohol sold at supermarkets and the ever-increasing value of bricks and mortar leading to Victorian boozers being converted into fancy homes.

But Professor Howell leads the reader into a more detailed consideration of the trends that have impacted on how you are served a pint.

He reveals how the second half of the 19th century saw breweries take on pubs to serve their product. “A crash came in 1899 with a wave of bankruptcies,” he says. “But despite this, 95 per cent of the licences were still owned by breweries. Think of Watney’s, Bass, Courage – all have trademark logos, instantly recognisable.”

Gone: The Falkland Arms

The tied house was a key link in a vertical industry, where the brewery made the product and provided it to the pub to pour.

“Expecting to find a rival company’s product was as deluded as walking into Wendy’s and ordering a Big Mac,” he says.

He highlights the contrast that while pub names might be individualistic and idiosyncratic, the owners were monolithic and corporate.

Today, the pub you pop into isn’t always owned by a brewery but is still part of a big business.

In 1989, as last orders were being called on Thatcher’s premiership, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission prompted legislation aimed at weakening the brewery’s grip: a 2,000-pub ownership cap was introduced.

Pubs became property assets, taking away the link between breweries and the point of sale. It meant the Pubcos (a cuddly name for property companies, Professor Howell explains) no longer had a specific interest in the product sold.

There was no motivation to keep a pub open if the owner thought they could sell something else for better returns.

So is there a future for the Great British Boozer?

“I’m trying not to be pessimistic, but I know from talking to students that pubs aren’t the draw that they were to me and my generation,” he told Review.

“The name ‘pub’ turns some people off, and not just women traditionally – if hardly exclusively – who are marginalised by pubs. I love pubs, but unless they appeal to punters they might indeed decline even further and faster, and perhaps become like red telephone boxes, iconic but redundant. There are reasons for guarded optimism, and many pubs have reinvented themselves. Seeing a commendably diverse group of young people playing Dungeons & Dragons on tessellated iPads filled me with joy.”

Gone: Duke of Cambridge

What advice would he offer PM Sir Keir Starmer, well known for enjoying a pint at his local, The Pineapple in Kentish Town?

“Too many things have gone against pubs, and the rise in National Insurance and the minimum wage can be added to Brexit,” he says. “Politicians do tend to do the rounds – being pictured with a pint, even drawing a pint, is our age’s equivalent of kissing babies’ heads – but there hasn’t been much support. It would be good if we could encourage smaller breweries to return to retailing as well as production. This means something more than breaking the beer tie, allowing more local beer to be sold in corporate-run pub chains.
“Could we bring back tied houses of a sort, for small breweries, or give them some tax relief and incentives?”

Professor Howell walks the reader through every trait that makes up the great British boozer: from the products poured to interior layouts and the exterior looks, trends in ownership to names and pub signs. He deconstructs this most British of institutions, delving under the bar to explain everyday attributes that are so recognisable that we barely notice them.

He tells us what denotes a “local” – both as a pub and as a regular – and dedicates a chapter to the relationship between pubs and animals. One Islington pub, the Blue Anchor Tavern – now The Artillery Arms – was renowned for its rat-baiting shows, he says.

And so on to food – there is a tightrope to walk, Professor Howell explains. Too fancy a menu and the pub morphs into a restaurant.

Gone: The Falcon

Indeed, if you go somewhere where your table is dubbed “covers” “you have probably left publand and entered the world of the gastropub.

“The daddy is The Eagle in Farringdon Road, opened as a destination in 1991,” he says. “The Eagle established an aesthetic that is still the overfamiliar template for contemporary pubs: bare floorboards, mismatched antique chairs, scrubbed tables and blackboard menus.”

He adds that he takes umbrage when people add the adjectives Great and British to anything – “you know you are in trouble” – and recognises that the concept of the Great British pub is an idealised concept.

“Cultural commentators tend to ladle on the syrup,” he reflects. “In 1944, George Orwell looked back to the pubs of a passing generation, conjuring up a Platonic pub which he called The Moon Under Water.’

“Orwell’s perfect pub is inseparable from something like the national soul or geist, which is all very understandable at the time of existential crisis. Orwell’s pub included “draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio…”

For Professor Howell, his idealised pub is essentially somewhere not too fussy.

He adds: “I’ve said that I don’t define the pub by a list of characteristics. But if you really push me, I’d like the local to be close (duh!). I’d like, ideally, a roaring fire in winter, a decent range of beers, a pub dog or two, some snacks, and food not too elevated in ambition.

“But a spare table, a reasonable welcome, and some good friends is all that is really necessary.”

• Pub. By Philip Howell, Bloomsbury Object Lessons series, £9.99