Well, now I know the way to our readers’ hearts: the pub. Since last week’s edition we have been inundated with recommendations for the nation’s best spots for a pint in response to our new weekly column, Beers and Sandwiches.
Malcolm Nichols from Four Mile Bridge in Anglesey, “an elderly pub-goer of 50 years’ experience”, wrote in to raise a glass (or two) to the new feature, though he said he was disappointed that we had spelled “Theakston’s” incorrectly. Ah, now, Malcolm, here we enter the dangerous territory of the pedant (in which many a New Statesman sub happily resides). According to our head of production, Chris Bourn, the beer (and brewery) is “Theakston” – singular – named after the family. Therefore, he assures me, when tagging on a demotic “s” in referring to a pint of one of the brewer’s many ales, you should include a possessive apostrophe. Linguists and grammarians out there, please weigh in with your thoughts. (Oh God, what have I started?)
There were plenty of other great suggestions: the Crown Inn in Stockport – a 200-year-old pub under the viaduct (Alan Gent, Cheshire); the Greyhound, a mile outside the hamlet of Llantrisant in the lower Usk Valley in South Wales (Sandy Blair, Usk); and the Ship in Rotherhithe, London (Pauline Brown, Streatham).
Pauline was particularly prescient about the sort of pub we are looking to feature each week. While there was no roaring fire at the Ship, the atmosphere was just right: “The welcome from the landlady, though taciturn, is warm, the ale is well kept, the house red very acceptable, and the ambience (no loud music, no blaring tellies) makes it the perfect place for three hearing-impaired women to catch up.” You had me at “taciturn but warm”: I will check it out.
The most intriguing pub letter of the week, however, came from John Young of Coed y Mynach, who described his favourite haunt in great detail, somewhere deep in the Welsh Marches. I was particularly taken by “Rum Day” – an entire afternoon and evening devoted to what John delightfully calls “the sugar spirit”. There was, however, a sting in the tail of John’s letter: he refused to name the pub. “The problem with a column like this is that it can lead to the ruin of great places by diluting their delights with newcomers. So I’m not going to tell you where to find this corner of heaven – just leave a few clues.” Touché.
John’s letter got me thinking, though. There is something about the modern world that feels so curated and standardised. Gone are the days of just turning up somewhere and hoping to find a hotel or restaurant or a random pub and taking your chances. Now it is difficult to avoid jumping on Google where everything is starred and ranked and listed. Whole cities now suffer this fate too. And it’s not just pub locals who now want things kept secret, but populations – just see the reaction to over-tourism in Spain.
It is hard to escape the information overload. To my shame, I have just planned my summer holiday entirely on ChatGPT. With three young children, it is too much of a gamble not to plan the holiday in this way. But something beautiful has surely been lost, buried in the avalanche of information that defines our modern reality. There is an increasingly plausible argument that even modern democratic politics as we know it is simply unable to function in our dopamine-addled world of constant, raging internet storms.
The magic of the good pub, though, is that it is homely without being home, a place of escape from this noise, at least for a few pints. In this environment of comforting familiarity, eccentricities (of the regulars and the decor) find the space to develop. I think something similar is true of those nations that are most at ease with themselves. But more pertinently for this note, I also think it is true of the best magazines, which are more than collections of paper and information, but clubs with their own rhythms and routines – and regulars. (That’s you, dear reader.)
On that note, thank you to all those regulars who got in touch, not just about pubs, but also about our special crisis issue last week, which – I am afraid to say – looks increasingly like a pointer for what is set to be a tumultuous year in geopolitics, fuelled, as ever, by the spiralling digital shouting matches that now dominate so much of our lives. With this in mind, I only have one piece of advice: go to the pub.
[Further reading: Will Grok destroy the special relationship?]
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This article appears in the 14 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Battle for power
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