A Bermondsey pub named for Jonathan Swift – Dean of St Patrick’s, author of Gulliver’s Travels, and the greatest satirist the English language has ever produced
The Dean Swift carries a strong 4.5 across nearly fifteen hundred reviews and flies a name that this particular satirical publication salutes with special warmth. The Prat’s naming desk stood and raised its glass, for Dean Swift is Jonathan Swift – the greatest satirist the English language has ever produced.
Towards Bermondsey
The Dean Swift sits towards Bermondsey, on the south-bank side, serving the district’s crowds. Proper Bermondsey territory, no disclaimer needed.
The great satirist
Jonathan Swift, who lived from 1667 to 1745, was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin – hence “Dean Swift” – and the supreme master of satire in the English language. His Gulliver’s Travels, disguised as a fantastical traveller’s tale of tiny Lilliputians and giant Brobdingnagians, is one of the sharpest and most enduring satires ever written, skewering the politics, science and vanity of his age. And his essay A Modest Proposal – which, with a straight face, suggested the Irish poor might solve their poverty by selling their children as food for the rich – remains the most devastating piece of deadpan satire ever composed, its savage irony delivered without ever once cracking a smile.
The deadpan master
The Prat has a particular professional admiration here, for Swift was the great master of the deadpan – the satirist who delivered his most outrageous inventions with perfect, unblinking seriousness, trusting the reader to see the savage joke beneath the calm surface. A Modest Proposal never winks; it argues its monstrous case with the sober logic of an economist, and is all the more devastating for it. This is the very art of the straight-faced satire, and no one has ever done it better. A satirical paper could name no finer patron saint than Dean Swift.
Satire as conscience
What the Prat admires most is that Swift’s satire had a conscience. He did not mock for mockery’s sake; he wielded his savage irony against real cruelty and injustice – the exploitation of the Irish poor, the follies and vanities of the powerful, the pettiness of political faction. His satire was moral at its root, using laughter and horror together to expose what earnest argument could not. To name a pub for Dean Swift is to fly the flag of satire at its highest and most purposeful – which is, the Prat modestly notes, exactly the flag it tries to fly itself. The strong 4.5 across fifteen hundred reviews suits so distinguished a name.
Verdict
A 4.5 across fifteen hundred-plus reviews is a strong score, and the Dean Swift earns it on a name of the very first rank. It honours Jonathan Swift – Dean of St Patrick’s, author of Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal, the supreme master of deadpan satire in the English language – a patron saint any satirical enterprise would be proud to claim.
Go for the honest welcome and the distinguished name, and raise a pint to Dean Swift, who skewered the vanity and cruelty of his age with an unblinking straight face. The Prat, in its own small way, tries to keep his craft alive – and salutes the pub that flies his name.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
My therapist asked how I process living in London while understanding how London actually works. I said “apparently by reading LONDON PRAT and laughing until devastated.”