Britain’s pubs say cheers to revival

LONDON: The church, the cricket lawn and the pub. For centuries, that “holy trinity” was the essence of life in a typical English village.Church congregations have long ago melted away, and there were fears that the pubs, those drinking establishments with quaint names, rickety furniture and lukewarm beer, would also disappear. Thousands of such “public houses” went out of business over the past two decades alone.But Britain’s pubs are fighting back, and are proving surprisingly resilient. Latest government statistics indicate that the decline in their numbers has been halted and that pub culture may actually be coming back into fashion. For countless generations of Brits, pubs were never just about drinking; they were social hubs, the beating hearts of local communities. In the age before the combustion engine, pubs were the staging posts for a national network of horse-drawn carriages.The recruitment of men into the military often started in pubs and, in times of national crises, it was to pubs that the Brits turned to to get the news and discuss their fate. Of all the myths about Britain’s resilience and determination during World War II, the image of ordinary people huddled around a radio set in a pub to greet bad news with a stoic face and victories with cheers happens to be absolutely true.The open fire on a cold evening and snoozing family dogs in a pub’s corner are also part of Britain’s iconic images as any fan of British detective fiction stories can attest. (Agencies)