Book ~ "The Joy of Pubs: Everything You Wanted to Know About Britain's Favourite Drinking Establishment" (2013) Frank Hopkinson

From Goodreads ~ Following on in the same vain of The Joy of Sheds, The Joy of Pubs is an intoxicating publication detailing everything and anything you want to know about pubs. It celebrates the many facets of the traditional British pub over the years, with chapters on: Pub Characters, Pub Games, Pub Fiddles (how the licensee has shafted his customers over the years), Pub Teams and Pub History from Geoffrey Chaucer to Jeffrey Bernard.

It features the great pubs of literature – Robert Louis Stevenson’s Admiral Benbow, Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and Charles Dickens’ The Grapes; the great pubs of film – The Crown Inn at Amersham (Four Weddings and a Funeral), the Crown Inn at Wells (Hot Fuzz); the great pubs of TV – apart from the Rover's Return, Queen Vic and Woolpack.

It features tales of barring, of dodgy deals of riotous lock-ins and of strange hauntings. The perfect present for anyone who loves their pub or just the idea that they have a pub.

Gord and I love pubs so I thought this book would be interesting.

The chapters are:

• Introduction
• Pub games - cards, cribbage, darts, billards and quizzes
• Pubs on TV - from shows such as Eastenders, The Brown Cow and Coronation Street
• Pub crimes - including the great train robbery and Jack the Ripper
• Pub names - why pub names have "angel", "black dog", "bull", "swan", etc. in them
• Pub records - highest pub, smallest pub, largest pub, oldest pub (Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem which is not to have existed at least as long as 1189!), the most remote (The Old Forge in Scotland which has no roads to it ... it's either a seven-mile passenger ferry or an 18-mile hike), the most common name ("The Red Lion")
• Pubs in films
• Pubs in literature
• Pub crawls
• Pubs with ghosts
• Pubs in the news
• Pub history

Though about pubs in Britain, I found most of the info interesting.  It made me envious because a lot of the pubs are old ... Toronto's oldest pub (one of my favourite pubs) is the Wheat Sheaf, which started serving drinks in 1849.  There are some old pictures of pubs scattered throughout the book.

This book made me want to book a trip to Britain just to check out the pubs!