Edward Ardizzone’s 1939

As a show of drinking pictures opens, Hugh Thompson staggers around London pubs in the footsteps of artist Edward Ardizzone

My 1939 pub crawl

In 1939, the illustrator Edward Ardizzone (1900-79) combined with his friend Maurice Gorham, a journalist (1902-75), to produce The Local. In 1947, there was a sequel, Back to the Local.

Beginning at their base in Maida Vale, it was a guide to pubs, their customs and culture.

There are chapters on the regulars, barmaids, saloon and public bars, outside and inside eating, drunks, musicians and after-hours drinking.

The Christmas show at the Christ Beetles Gallery in London includes a marvellous picture of a barmaid by Ardizzone. The artist Paul Cox has, like me, done a pilgrimage around the same pubs and painted them – those pictures are also in the show.

I was at the same school as Ardizzone, Clayesmore in Dorset. He was there from 1914 to 1919. My old schoolfriend Stephen Dover and I (both class of 1964) thought it might be fun to check up on the differences between then and now.

First, the Prince Alfred near Warwick Avenue tube (pictured, by Paul Cox). Ardizzone would have been delighted that the architecture, windows and bars and the way they have been divided are very much as he would have seen them.

Today, there are no public or saloon bars, though the ‘cavernous architectural saloons’ are still very much there, complete with frosted windows, carved partitions and ‘crouch-down’ connecting doorways.

Games have long since gone, with darts and cribbage a distant memory. Board games were played before COVID but haven’t come back. The area once reserved for darts-playing is no more.

And the men in flat caps have gone the same way. Funnily enough, in 1939, The Local despaired of the craze for darts changing the character of pubs,

Ardizzone’s pub drawings, Back to the Local. Above left: the Goat. Above: darts at the Alfred. Left: the Warrington lounge

‘but the worst dangers seemed to have passed away’.

The barmaids of Ardizzone’s day have been replaced by a charming Greek chap, Ilias, who has been there two years. He reported that the pub’s business is mainly locals and mostly at weekends, especially at Sunday lunchtime, when the place is heaving.

On the Wednesday lunchtime we visited, there were only a dozen people in a pub designed for ten times that number. We gave the food, in terms of quality and value, 7/10. And a higher mark for the ale.

Next we went to the Spread Eagle, just off Oxford Street. Eighty years ago, the pub was famous for its barmaids: they were ‘there to attract men and anxious to please … at the Spread Eagle, two dizzy blondes both sprang forward as soon as you opened the door’.

In the book, as a West End pub, it was likely to suffer from Bright Young People, the Flash Trade chasing out the Regulars and then deserting and leaving behind a wreck – ‘an awful warning for the licensed trade’.

The Spread Eagle’s dining room was then representative of ‘smaller restaurants that are truly part of the pub but they are discreetly segregated from the bars’.

Architecturally, little has changed at the Spread Eagle. For 22 years, this Greene King pub has been run by the totally charming Liverpudlians Paul and Elaine. There was banter about when the dizzy blondes would appear. They didn’t.

Typically, the pub gets its regulars from the tourists and shoppers who flow up and down Oxford Street. Neither were very apparent. But that Friday lunchtime the pub had a good crowd.

What would have depressed oldschool Ardizzone was that this is now a football pub. Paul, a Liverpool fan, has installed the TV screens that gave the pub another strand of business.

Just as in 1939, a limited menu was well served. The steak pies had rich gravy, as they would have before the war.

Then it was off to the Goat (pictured, by Ardizzone) off Old Bond Street. In The Local, it is famous for ‘its modest exterior and cosy private bar’.

Gorham was pleased the pub avoided the dread ‘young men about town with curled moustaches and a lot of shirtcuff, and dress designers and photographers’ models’, the kind of people who were (for Ardizzone) ruining West End pubs. In the saloon bar, there were reproductions of horse prints and caricatures of the landlord. The landlord ‘chats to the habitués. Dalliance with the barmaids is practised.’

The pub is still a very traditional mini-pub. It’s now run by a Polish lady called Daga and Anthony from Deptford. Anthony was only two weeks into the job, while Daga had been there some time. She loved that every day was different. She knew her regulars’ names; they were like family. After five years with Greene King, she is now an assistant manageress.

The last stop was the Warrington Hotel (pictured, by Ardizzone), Maida Vale. This was the grandest of the four stops in our mini pub crawl.

In 1939, The Local called it ‘a landmark – a fine building that dominates a whole neighbourhood. It has not rested on its laurels.’ It had, as now, just been ‘furbished’. An illuminated sign then proclaimed it as ‘London’s liveliest lounge bar’.

In the illustration of the Warrington in The Local, men and women are lolling or going upstairs, suggesting there were assignations going on. The present owners admit that at one time it had a reputation for that sort of thing.

So, on a Tuesday lunchtime, the two Old Clayesmorians approached. While the bar was not exactly bursting, there was much to enjoy: Victorian architecture to die for, murals rarely seen, priceless mosaics, stained glass of international standard, marble arches and tiled fireplaces… Ardizzone would have felt at home.

Other pubs had shown the dizzy barmaid was a feature of the past. But at the Warrington, there was Jane: big, buxom, friendly, tattooed and fun.

Now assistant manageress, she has worked in pubs all her life and has two children in their early twenties who are following in her footsteps. She said business was getting back to normal. Popular bands played to full houses on Saturday nights. And the hotel’s five bedrooms were nearly always full.

She made our day.

Back to the Local by Maurice Gorham, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, is published by Faber

The Illustrators: The British Art of Illustration 1871-2022 is at the Chris Beetles Gallery, London, until 31st December 2022. Pictures for sale include The Barmaid by Edward Ardizzone and The Prince Alfred by Paul Cox