I know a lot about London pubs, and this made me smile.

If you want to see the kind of old layout he’s talking about, almost any Sam Smith pub in London will do - they pride themselves on keeping it traditional - with the best and most striking example probably being the Princess Louise near Holborn. Just don’t expect any beer names you recognise - it’s a brewery pub that only sells stuff made by Sam Smiths (the beer), or branded Sam Smiths (the spirits, the snacks…)

Most of the others still exist, but I think have been refurbished quite extensively and not in a way he’d like.

However, there is some hope. Newer bars are opening that are trying to tap into a less sports-focused vibe. Some focusing on food, some on entertainment, quite a few on a wider range of more unusual beers (the “Tap” chain near train stations and just down the road from Farringdon for example).

Of course the dominant player in the mega pub “hall” space is Wetherspoons. Caverns - low-ceilinged cathedrals almost - to cheap beer and Brexit politics. They’re cheap, and so attract clientele who are price sensitive. That leaves more room in all the others for those of us who value something else, I guess.

The pub trade in the U.K. though is in trouble. It’s interesting that Europe’s largest consumer lobby group is based in the U.K.: CAMRA. It’s most interesting that the CAMpaign for Real Ale, started to protect traditionally brewed cask ale from being obliterated by the sorts of breweries that thought beer should be tankered like petrol, has had to change it’s target.

CAMRA basically thinks the war for Real Ale has been won. The rise of microbreweries has meant a plentiful supply of good quality beer is secure. But the pub is not. So now it’s become a bit more CAMPUB, and campaigns to save the business of public houses itself, the traditional bar games (skittles or bar billiards, anyone?), and the communities that sit in them.

The architecture is important, the interior should be considered, the screens have a place in some - but not all - pubs.

But it’s the people that matter, and at the moment the industry is in a mess.

It’s remarkable so many pubs in this article still exist. I don’t think many of them will survive another 60 years, perhaps not even another 10.

Enjoy them while you can.

Tangential: As an American, one of the things I liked most about London pubs when I first started visiting in the ‘00s was the lack of screens, which were hard to escape in American bars. Unfortunately this was only temporary, as the majority of the London pubs I’ve seen on recent visits are covered with screens like home.

Wow there is a lot to unpick here.

1. I think all the pubs he mentions have gone.

2. He was born and raised in Chelsea. That’s pretty rare now - Londonnhas undergone a paroxysm of middle class selling up to wealthy (foreign) investors and I would be amazed if any architects today could be born and raised there.

3. I love the detail of the balance bars on the pub lanterns. They are all gone because an electric bulb can operate even when swinging - but a candle or gas just need to remain upright - wow.

4. Cars - cars are hardly mentioned because this was 1966 and you could drink and drive, you can park anywhere because most people did not have / need a car

5. Men not families - again still the sixties

6. The rise of food and Gastropubs - it’s rare a pub can survive on drinking alone and being part of the lunchtime food trade is almost as profitable as evening drinking

Our “third spaces” do matter and reflect on us in interesting ways - going to come back to this article :-)

there was a bad time in the 1960s, when this article was published, but the pubs that are managing to survive nowadays (non-survival for a variety of reasons - covid, taxation to name two) are much better than suggested.

> The great brewers – Watneys, Whitbreads and so on—are disposing of all that rubbish: that’s out now, finished with, they say.

So was this the start of the great decline in the quality of brewing in the UK during the 70's that led to CAMRA and eventually to the microbrewery renaissance we had in the late 90's to 00's?

> Quite shortly the English pub will be extinct, part of history.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Many of the described style of pubs are alive and well, often in the form of a Sam Smith’s.

A random blog I found through Kagi Small Web is one man's journey to visit all the pubs in the Good Beer Guide: https://simeyeveritt.wixsite.com/brapa

It's such an interesting look into these slices of life, both current and former, that are so unlike my own experiences.

UK Pubs always have a style, they stick out when abroad. I've not noticed the same consistency of style in US bars/pubs.

I mainly drank around UCL in bloomsbury and down at the Princess Louise near high holborn. Cosy snugs and a refurbished Victorian ambiance in the early 80s.

My parents drank around Shepherd's Bush in the 50s and 60s and "the goons" used to refine their schtik in the pub. Fun times!