Back to the Local: Maurice Gorham’s ode to London’s Irish pubs

Back to the Local is a forgotten literary gem, now republished in a new edition by Faber.

Written by Irish ex-pat Maurice Gorham, former Director of Raidió Éireann (latterly RTÉ), and illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, Back to the Local is a delightful, charming ramble around the London pubs of the 1940s, including a chapter on London’s legendary Irish pubs. Indeed, many of the places described are still standing today!

In the extract published below, Gorham celebrates the magic of The Irish House…

It will not have escaped the perceptive reader that this book has its partialities. Ardizzone does not attempt to conceal his weakness for antique elegance in pub architecture and I have no desire to hide my own leaning to Guinness’s stout on draught. Both these predilections meet in full flood at Mooney’s in the Strand. Guinness on draught has spread far beyond the Irish houses, as has been mentioned elsewhere in this book. And there are other Irish houses, indeed other Mooney’s. But this one in the Strand always seems to me the father and mother of them all.

It owes something to geography, of course; amongst all the rebuilding, it and its neighbour Romano’s survive to remind us of the days when the Strand was the centre of London’s entertain- ment in a way that no London street is now. In my case it owes much to personal associations, for it was there that I used to drink with the uniformed staff of the BBC when the BBC was at Savoy Hill and its white-collared officials infested all the more pretentious of the local bars.

In those days it was partitioned off into two bars and a snug, distinguished by no difference in price or fare but lending them- selves to the ritual of lunching in the snug and then having one for the road in each of the bars on the way out. Removal of the partitions has for once, I think, actually improved the house. You now get a clear view of the long lofty room, with the narrow pink marble bar typical of Mooney’s running right down it, and faded allegorical paintings barely disclosing their unfashionable charms from the high walls. Apart from the paintings its furnishings are purely utilitarian, and the bar is graced by those imposing tall wooden casks that hold wine and spirits on draught. Unless you are a connoisseur of wine, you can get a feeling of old-fashioned grandeur by ordering a glass of port on draught and seeing the barman raise a pink head on the tall glass; and if you are a connoisseur of whiskey you might do worse than try a ball of malt direct from the wood.

In happier days Mooney’s was a wonderful place for value in food as well as drink. Their bread, butter, cheese, and pies were as genuine as the draught stout, and a pint of stout, bread, butter, and cheese, all for one-and-twopence, made a good start to anybody’s lunch. The value extended to the drawing of the stout, and still does. No barmaid ever worked at Mooney’s; their bar- men come from Dublin, and they are all experts in the art of getting the correct creamy head on a well-filled pint.

The green clock of Mooney’s hangs outside other good pubs besides the one in the Strand. There is, for instance, one in Oxford Street near Soho Square, one at Cambridge Circus, one in Fleet Street, one in Fetter Lane with a particularly friendly landlord, one in Holbom (besides the one that was bombed), one just over London Bridge. You can find City variants of the species in Cole- man Street and St. Mary Axe. There is the rival firm of Ward’s, who have Irish Houses all over the town: there is one in Bull’s Head Alley off the Strand, one mercifully close to the Central Hall, Westminster, one at the comer of Gray’s Inn Road, one disguised as the Sun and Horseshoe in Mortimer Street, but the pivot of them all is the one below Piccadilly Circus, with an entrance next to the London Pavilion, which can share with the theatre the claim to be placed at the Centre of the World.

This central Ward’s is perhaps the most Irish of the Irish Houses in its fittings, but it has a cosmopolitan clientele; overseas visitors find their way to it as soon as they arrive in London. It used to have a celebrated oyster bar, and it is still a good place to get a meal.

It takes all sorts to make a world, and I have taken many a horse to the water and found him too saucy to drink. But anybody who is interested in London pubs should not rest from searching until he has once leaned his elbows on the pink marble at Mooney’s in the Strand.

Back To The Local is published by Faber.