Hub on Pubs: Great Hub Pages Hubs on Great English Pubs

When I think of England, and "things English", one of the first that comes to mind is ye olde English pub. Almost every novel I have ever read, except for those of the Bronte sister's - I don't think they were big on pubs - from "The Pickwick Papers," "The Scarlet Pimpernel," and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," to the wonderful, modern detective stories of Dorothy Sayers, Martha Grimes, and P.D. James, every one has included a colorful tavern, a local watering hole with a fascinating name, or a neighborhood pub that figured in the action somehow. What would England be without her amazing pubs, inns and taverns?

While perusing this week's HubMob for interesting reading material (there's a lot there - I recommend you check it out), I came across a HubMob hub by ethel smith - English Pubs. Her hub set me to musing on this question.

I decided I needed to write on it, but I quickly concluded it was much too worthy a topic to have been passed over in the past. Sure enough, many fine hubbers had already tackled their own hubs on pubs.

The idea intrigued me though, and "hubs on pubs" tickled my fancy. It sounds a bit like a Dr. Seuss book - for grown-ups, perhaps, but nonetheless, a Dr. Seuss book.

Once I started digging though, I was so impressed with these other hubs on pubs that I decided they should be included here, so that you can enjoy them enmasse, as it were.

To that end, this hub includes a compilation of some of the great "hubs on pubs", in tribute to all the great hubbers who wrote them.

Since the Highwayman first clattered into the old inn yard in search of the innkeepers "red-lipped daughter, plaiting a dark red love knot into her long black hair," English pubs and taverns have held a magical place in our imagination.

They are the last bastions of home and country, where brave men rallied before setting sail to rescue innocent folk from the terrible wrath of Madame de Guillotine.

They are the quaint rural haunts of colorful characters, replete with blackened beams and a canny barkeep who knows everyone business for miles around. These are the stuff of legend.

Martha Grimes, master of the detective genre, names her novels for English pubs.They are great names, too.

The first of her crime novels I read was called "The Dirty Duck". I was absolutely enchanted with the heady mixture of Shakespeare, Olde English public houses, and the sensitive, poetic, and intelligent hero, Inspector Richard Jury.

I have since seen him brilliantly portrayed by noted actor, Adam Dalgliesh, in the BBC miniseries of several of her Inspector Jury novels.

In a 1983 interview with Washington Post reporter, Sarah Booth Conroy, responding about why she chose pub names for her stories, Martha Grimes is quoted as saying:

"I remember vividly when I decided to write my first mystery. I had written a narrative poem and another novel, neither published. But in 1977, I was sitting in a Hot Shoppe in Bethesda [Maryland], looking at a book about English pub names, and I came across 'The Man With a Load of Mischief'. Suddenly I knew that's what I wanted to do: write books set in English pubs.... Now, unless I have the pub name first, I can't write the book."

Fictional detectives from the great Sherlock Holmes to Inspector Morse have relied on the corner pub as a source of information - I love John Thaw's portrayal of that complex and world-weary D.C.I., Chief Inspector Morse.

To be sure, Holmes almost always went out of his way to be well-disguised, so as to fit in with the locals, but any fan of the genre knows that the best place to dig up some dirt is "round t' pub", or "down t' boozer", as the local hostelry is known in some parts of the world.

Every good fan of the North American versions of the murder-mystery genre knows that the local watering hole can be a wonderful source of every conceivable atmosphere, from slick and sophisticated, to seedy, back street dives. More importantly, the local bar tender can be a top-notch source for information about a suspect or that suspect's movements and, best of all, the suspect's "connections".

So too, in English detective fiction, the local publican has a marvelous eye for who knows who, and who knows what, as well as being somewhat of an amateur psychologist - I'm sure from hearing so many tales of woe poured out over a pint.

From a source of information, to a source of repose and a cold pint after a long day pursuing "bad 'uns", and sifting fact from fiction, the local pubs, taverns, and ale houses have well served a long line of fictional English detectives and their reading public.

Collected here, some Hubs on Pubs -

For fun and reading pleasure;

But Hubs on Pubs, though fun to write,

Are dry as Temperance treasure;

No - Hubs on Pubs contain no beer,

No spirits, ale, nor stout;

For such as those, to pubs we goes,

Not hubs, though some might doubt -

Now, raise a glass to Hubs on Pubs,

To hubbers fine who penned 'em,

So drink we now, "Good Health, too all!"

And England's best, we send 'em!

© 2010, Text by Elle Fredine, All rights reserved