There’s no reason to think you couldn’t get along with Ivor Braka. Even if he doesn’t try very hard to appear likeable in Horst A. Friedrichs’ photograph. It’s also difficult to judge what to make of the dog at his feet, a greyhound at attention. Braka is the manager of The Gunton Arms pub in Norwich and he says: “I wanted a pub that I would like to visit myself. I was given very strong advice to think of the customers when designing the place. But I was always believed that you should do exactly the opposite. It never made sense to me that the customer should be king.”
The Gunton Arms is one of nearly three dozen “Great Pubs” in England that photographer Horst A. Friedrichs and author Stuart Husband chose for their volume of this title. And Ivor Braka isn’t the only idiosyncratic landlord you meet in the book. John Warland, who founded Liquid History Tours, which offers walking tours of London’s pub culture, writes in his foreword of a “wonderful selection of eclectic, often eccentric venues”. Their operators have made them so.
Ivor Braka, for example, is also an art dealer, and his pub, which is reminiscent of a country inn, is something like his gallery. The furnishings are as dignified as one might expect: there is a fireplace, leather armchairs, lots of dark wood, and a moose skull hangs on one wall. On the other hand, there are works of art that you wouldn’t normally expect to find in a place like this, including a number of neon works by Tracey Emin in one room.
Actually, a pub is a familiar place. You usually know what to drink and eat there. Good pubs offer security, even refuge. “They are the hub of local life,” Warland said in his foreword. In which he sounds the alarm at the same time. Because the pubs are not only in a difficult position during the corona pandemic, a quarter of all pubs in England had already closed in the previous decade.
Stuart Husband describes a paradox in his texts. On the one hand, many pub owners do very well when they refer to traditions. On the other hand, they are also successful because they change a few crucial things and thus open up a new audience without scaring away the old one.
Again and again in the book you come across pubs that have recently been taken over. And whose landlords have first brought the old counters and tiles and furniture and stained glass windows back into shape. Quite a few of the pubs were opened in the 19th century, some even earlier. Above the door of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street in London is written “Rebuild 1667” – rebuilt after the great fire a year earlier.
This dignified atmosphere of many older pubs, if cultivated, exudes cosiness. It’s not about trends and fashions, but about reliability. However, it is a little different when it comes to the question of what goes in the glasses and on the plates. Many of these “Great Pubs” offer beers from small breweries, some brews being exclusively served in a specific pub.
The cuisine in a number of the pubs presented is also more ambitious than usual. The Butcher’s Tap and Grill in Marlow, west of London, is said to be the only two-star pub in the world. But even that takes its cue from classic pub fare, like brawn with mustard mayonnaise and pickles for £55, or grilled and fries – but from cured meat. Ben Tunnicliffe used to work in Michelin-starred kitchens and now runs the Tolcarne Inn in Penzance. The city’s port handles 53 species of fish, which feature on Tunnicliffe’s menu.
Of course, there are also many stories from the historic pubs: especially those about who might have been a guest when and where. Husband tells many, but does not vouch for their truthfulness. At the end you have read and seen more than 30 charming portraits of places and people. Has experienced strange and contradictory things. As Nancy Swanick, for example, says, who is over 90 years old and has been running the “Peveril of the Peak” in Manchester since 1971: An innkeeper has to be a democrat and an autocrat at the same time.
Horst A. Friedrichs, Stuart Husband: Great Pubs. A journey through England’s pub culture. Translated from the English by Cornelius Hartz. Prestel Verlag, Munich / London / New York 2022. 240 pages, 40 euros.