David

Walk into any decent pub in Soho on a Tuesday evening and you will find the same thing that has drawn people here for three centuries: a room full of strangers arguing about something that does not matter, bonded by a shared refusal to go home. Nowhere in London does pub culture feel more alive, … Read more

Walk down Broadwick Street in Soho today and you might stroll right past a seemingly ordinary Victorian pub called the John Snow. Tucked between fashion boutiques and coffee shops, it looks like hundreds of other historic London watering holes. But this unassuming pub carries one of the most remarkable stories in medical history, a tale … Read more

There is something deeply British about the idea that your best work happens in a pub. Conversations start over a pint. Ideas are sketched on beer mats. Friendships are forged at the bar. So when creators Andrew Kay and Nic Doodson sat in a Soho pub watching strangers bond over impromptu sing-alongs, they did not … Read more

Walk down any street in Soho today and you will pass buildings that have stood for centuries, serving pints through revolutions, bombings, and cultural transformations. The story behind Soho’s oldest surviving pubs is not just about beer and brickwork. It is about how a patch of central London became one of the most vibrant drinking … Read more

Picture this: it is 1984, and the Coach and Horses on Greek Street is so thick with cigarette smoke that you can barely see the bar. Jeffrey Bernard is holding court in the corner, three drinks deep before lunchtime. Francis Bacon has just left a wad of cash behind the bar at the Colony Room. … Read more

Soho in the 1950s and 60s was the beating heart of bohemian London, and at its centre sat three legendary watering holes where the greatest figurative painters of the 20th century came to drink, argue, and create. The pubs where Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud drank in Soho formed what regulars called the Bermuda Triangle … Read more

Soho has always attracted writers, rebels, and dreamers. Among its narrow streets and neon signs sits a small Victorian pub that punches well above its weight in literary history. The Dog and Duck, tucked away on Bateman Street, is one of London’s most quietly significant cultural landmarks. But how did a pub named after a … Read more

Jeffrey Bernard became known as the patron saint of Soho drinkers because he did something no one else had done before: he turned the daily ritual of sitting in Soho pubs from dawn to dusk into a literary art form. Through his weekly “Low Life” column in The Spectator, he documented the drinkers, publicans, artists, … Read more

Walk into The French House on Dean Street in Soho, and you will immediately notice something different. There are no glowing phone screens, no background music, no television flickering in the corner. And when you order a beer, you will get it in a half-pint glass. These two rules, banning mobile phones and refusing to … Read more

Norman Balon, the self-styled “rudest landlord in Britain,” ran the Coach and Horses on Greek Street in Soho for 63 years. When he died on June 4, 2026 at the age of 99, London lost one of its last true originals — a man who insulted prime ministers, cut off drunks with theatrical relish, and … Read more