CALLED TO THE BAR

The Prospect of Whitby is the oldest riverside pub in London with a history dating back to 1520

For the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, “Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.” For Londoners, for centuries, the respite has come in the city’s many watering holes. Rimbaud glugged gin and absinthe at the Hibernia Arms in Old Compton Street and across Soho in the 1870s; he was just one of many celebrities, charlatans, deviants and dilettantes who sought solace in the contents of a glass over the centuries in Britain’s capital. A visit to a pub remains a very popular pastime with visitors to London too, as 54% of American tourists alone have said that it was one of their top activities according to Visit Britain research.

So where did it all begin? The Romans fermented cider and harvested grapes to make wine during their tenure in London from the first century AD onwards, while during the Middle Ages mead was