THE ENGLISH INN

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22195, 11 September 1937, Page 18

THE ENGLISH INN

An Hospitable Catalogue

English Inns and Road-Houses. By Laurie Ltd. 27

7 George Long:, F.R.G.S. T. Werner 1 pp. (20s net.)

Mr Long rightly says that it may seem "a rash enterprise" to write another book about British inns, a subject to which many have preceded him; but if they have been before him, he goes beyond them. He has spent 40 years on the task of visiting "hundreds of ancient inns, widely scattered"—indeed, "some thousands"; he has collected legends and stories in tap-room or barparlour; and he has taken his own photographs excellent pictures, with which this book is richly illustrated. Modern changes are working out an evolution of mixed effects. Celebrated inns have been demolished or turned to new purposes. The great growth of road traffic has caused historic homes and picturesque old buildings, such as watermills, to be converted into roadhouses, opening their beauty to the

tion removed, and their old and lovely timbering given back to the traveller's eye. These changes have been rapid enough to give Mr Long much new material, as well as to rob him of some that has been used before; but even if he were unable to claim no advantage in being "up-to-date" the thoroughness with which his work has been done, the charm of the material, and the pleasant simplicity of his manner would establish his book on an unapproached height. It is a marvellous catalogue, classified easily under regional headings and others. Thus the Great North road, the Bath road, the Dover road, and half a dozen others have their own chapters, as do London inns and Scottish inns. The strangest inns and the most beautiful are separately grouped, and smugglers' inns, highwaymen's inns, and "murder inns, and inns with a story"—a misleading phrase, perhaps when all have one—fill other chapters. Famous

same trade as the new ones, with ' their bathing-pools and dance-floors; t and the more vulgar manifestations i of the taste for the antique have, in t these modern erections, produced r some horrid shams and fakes and J pretences. But a better result has £ followed, too. Ancient inns that t flourished when the roads were the *■ main arteries of traffic and declined '<■ when it was diverted to the rail- I ways have been refurbished, the * plaster and paper of their degenera- »

"literary" inns make a pleasant theme; and it cannot be thought too narrow a specialisation or too high a distinction that keeps Dickens and "Pickwick inns by themselves. There is no need to explore the classification further, and to dive into the catalogue is a pleasure that must be resisted. One summary sentence is all that may be added: Mr Long has given readers with tastes at all matching his own a book they will browse in, happily, again and again.