How about a free beer?

It's my round

LYSE DOUCET ALERT Tickets for our Lyse Doucet event in September sold out at quite a clip. If you missed out on tickets — or if you live further afield — we’re thrilled to be able to offer you signed & dedicated copies of her book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul. Just click here and choose who you would like your copy dedicated to. We’ll post them to you (or have them ready for you to pick up) after our event.

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IT’S FASHIONABLE to declare London “over”, but I find such talk rather dull. There is, of course, an obvious course of action open to those who believe that, but they rarely seem to take it. Someone I know has been threatening to quit since at least 2011.

Perhaps they’re unwilling to leave behind some of the many things that make our city great. Theatre, theatre and more theatre. The parks and commons. The lights dancing down the Thames on a summer night. Specialist food shops and restaurants on neighbourhood high streets catering to almost every conceivable nationality and taste.

Few things, though, set London apart from comparable global cities more than its pubs. It’s not so much that they are good — many are mediocre, some truly dire — as that they are everywhere. According to data collected by the Greater London Authority, there are no fewer than 3,535 of them, or one for every 2,500 of us (which would make for a competitive quiz night).

You’d be hard pressed to walk more than a few streets from any London landmark without finding a pavement thronging with drinkers. It’s the same story in the neighbourhoods. In Balham alone, we’ve an embarrassment of riches, from the vast beer garden of the Devonshire and the slightly frayed charm of the Bowls Club to the tucked-away Grove, home to many Backstory proofs-and-pints “meetings”, and the grand Bedford, soon to celebrate its centenary, its club room host to comedy nights and bands.

A fine boozer The Bedford

For good and ill, pubs are the scene of many of my most vivid London memories. Decamping to the Plumbers Arms (“the Plumbers”) after my first day as a trainee reporter, and many more after that; commiserating with colleagues after yet another round of media redundancies; snogging at the end of a was-that-three-hours evening in a beer garden; in too many others, realising before the first sip of beer that I’d swiped the wrong way; berating an idiot throwing his beer when it became apparent, yet again, that it wasn’t coming home.

Yet few books do this institution justice. There are guide books for real ale nerds and plenty of books-as-lists, of course. But far from capturing the essence of these places, they can feel a little like being cornered by the pub bore, you-wouldn’t-believe-it statistics at the ready. (“Your usual, Brian?”)

Step forward The Fence, which impishly bills itself “the UK’s only magazine” and which I’m sure Graydon Carter would be editing were he a 20-something Londoner. They’ve taken on the task of producing a book worthy of our locals and done it with style.

Like the magazine, The Pub is an eclectic and decidedly irreverent collection of naughty features, gossipy nuggets, beautiful writing and reportage. Reading it feels like spending an evening in the best kind of boozer. There’s John Banville, ruminating on the past glory of Ireland’s pubs, and I could have sworn that was Tom Parker Bowles and I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There author Róisín Lanigan lurking in a corner. Before too long, you’re on your fourth pint chuckling maniacally as Bron Maher sketches his dream gay pub (“the Ass and Plough”).

It roams well beyond London, too, from Banville and Ana Kinsella on Ireland to a splendid Clive Martin dispatch from the “upcycled boozers” of the Cotswolds.

The book comes out on 14th August and we’re delighted to be chosen by The Fence as its bookshop partner. Since pre-orders are so important to a book’s success, we’d like to help The Pub generate a buzz akin to last orders at the start of a bank holiday weekend.

To that end, our friends at the Bedford are offering a free beer* to the first 400 readers to pre-order the book for collection at Backstory.

All you need to do is click on the button and select pick up in store at checkout:

We’ll let you know when the book is ready for collection in mid-August and give you a receipt to redeem for a can of craft beer at the Bedford.

(If you live further afield and want the book posted to you, we can’t give you a free beer, but we can still send you a great book. Just use this separate link to pre-order instead.)

Cheers!

Tom

*Applies to cans of craft beer at the Bedford’s discretion. Only available when pre-ordering for collection at Backstory, not for delivery. First 400 pre-orders only.

Want more Backstory?

• Come to one of our author events in the shop almost every week

• Request a book to pick up in the shop (we can usually get a book for the next day)

• If you’re further afield, order a book from our website