John Sturgis

Wishful drinking: pubs have always been good at bending the rules

Pubs have always been good at bending the rules

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issue 14 November 2020

In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy has a running skit about the alehouse in his heroine’s home village where her father, and quite often mother too, disappear for hours at a time. People aren’t allowed to drink on the premises, so are strictly limited to ‘a little board about six inches wide and two yards long, fixed to the garden palings by pieces of wire’.

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