The psychology of the pub

Andrew Jefford reflects on the crucial role that not enough pubs play in soothing the fevered brow of mankind

Circumstances have recently propelled me into reading a book I would not normally have picked up: it's called News From Somewhere, and is written by Britain's leading philosopher of the right, Roger Scruton.

The book's subtitle is On Settling. What it means to settle somewhere, what benefits it can bring and how important it is, is something that greatly occupies Scruton.

I also recently attended a one-day conference on wine andphilosophy held as part of the philosophy programme at the University of London's School of Advanced Study; Scruton read a paper there, too. Its subject was intoxication (not necessarily a bad thing, you may be pleased to hear), but the often-caustic philosopher moved entertainingly on to other areas, eventually suggesting that the act of settling was not only the origin of civilisation, but even that religion itself was a kind of psychological need, which follows the act of settling. More-over, the way that a particular wine tastes of its place of origin is, for Scruton, "the flavour imparted to wines by the act of settlement".

Corrosive pessimism

Now there is much with which I disagree in Scruton's book; for a philosopher, he can be dis-appointingly doctrinaire, and there is a corrosive pessimism to his work, which means that he will always describe the cloud and drench us in its vapour rather than give us a glimpse of the silver lining that lies behind.

His fundamental point, though, seems to me to be a sound one ­ which is that much that is damaging and negative in the world is a consequence of the fact that more and more of the world's population is unsettled, rootless and drifting.

This is something, by way of example, I feel keenly myself. I'm almost 50, yet I don't feel I belong anywhere. I've lived in at least a dozen places, none of them for very long, and I am probably going to have to move again soon. I envy those who have passed their life in one house, one village or even one town or city, and who, therefore, have some sense of belonging, of being housed not just in a building but also in a place on Earth.

All of this set me thinking about how important the pub is as an institution in Britain. Pub buildings are not infrequently among the oldest in a settlement; this is as true of London as it is of a Cotswold village. Together with the church, pubs form the core of a settlement; in these prosperous and secular times, they are used far more extensively than the church.

The regulars

Those who are settled will always meet in a pub; we call them the regulars. But pubs are also the places where the unsettled (like me) can not only meet the settled, but feel briefly what it must be like to be settled, and bask in the warmth of settlement itself.

I don't doubt that even for those who are settled and have long-term addresses in a single place, the pub is often a happier and more comfortable place than home. Houses can be cold in winter; pubs are always warm. Houses can be (through neglect or unhappiness as well as poverty) shabby and squalid; pubs are bright and cheerful. (In a similar way, churches used to be appealingly beautiful in the days when almost all of a congregation went home to a hovel.)

If we have been able to hang on to what is most precious in the notion of settlement in these ludicrously mobile times, much of the credit must go to the pub. Scruton doesn't talk much about pubs but it seems to me that their continuing place in our affections helps make his point.

But which pubs? This is the point at which a bit of Scrutonian pessimism might not go amiss. The proliferation of pub chains, "themes" and "brands" drains away the psychological warmth offered by the pub as the central point of a settlement. For many years I found myself using Travel Inns extensively as I went up and down the country. The Travel Inn (an excellent institution) was always attached to a Beefeater (a much more dubious national asset). The only way to tell whereabouts in the country you were in a Beefeater was to listen to the accents of the staff; everything else about it was utterly formulaic and homogenous. And in these mobile, rootless times, even accents weren't always diagnostic.

Fail miserably

The story is the same in Wetherspoons, All Bar Ones and other managed chains. They may offer lots of good things, like great ale, fair food, smoke-free air, clean toilets and polite staff, but in terms of psychological nourishment they fail miserably.

Great pubs are different ­ but what is a great pub in thiscontext? It doesn't simplymean the £1m half-timbered,architecturally-listed freehouses which star in all the pub guides, it also means the neighbourhood community pubs, that no-one ever writes about and few visit apart from the already settled.

A great pub in this context is the kind of distilled essence of its locality, a place in which every individual (staff or customer) belongs, locked into each other's orbits, like planets in a solar system. These are the places that can give meaning to broken and fractured lives, and which can provide psychological and spiritual as well as physical nourishment. Most of us are indeed unsettled in a way our ancestors would have found both perplexing and distressing. Pubs ­ even before the first pint has been pulled ­ are a salve.