Enterprise Review: The Word Meant Risk and Now Means Scale | An enterprise was a hazardous undertaking a sensible person would not have started, and now it means a company with a procurement department
Salt Quay Review: A 3.9, and the Riverside Pub Is Selling the Weather | Three thousand people, a superb view, and a number that is being decided by the forecast
Smugglers Review: Smuggling Was the National Industry | Tea, brandy, lace and tobacco – and at its height a very substantial proportion of the country was involved
Crown and Cushion Review: The Cushion Is What the Crown Sits On | It is a coronation image, the cushion is real, and it is one of the few pub names that is describing an actual object
Black Lion Review: The Lion on the Sign Is a Coat of Arms and the Colour Is the Clue | Heraldry is a code, the colours have names, and a black lion belonged to somebody specific
Brunel Review: The Thames Tunnel Is Under Your Feet and It Nearly Killed Everybody | The first tunnel under a navigable river anywhere in the world, it flooded repeatedly, and it is still carrying trains
Jeremy Bentham Review: He Is Still Sitting in a Box at University College | He asked to be preserved and displayed, and he is – and the head went wrong and it is kept separately
Lyttelton Arms Review: Humph Was a Jazz Trumpeter First | Humphrey Lyttelton played for fifty years before the radio show, and he had a genuine hit record
Wheatsheaf Review: Dylan Thomas Met His Wife Here and It Went Badly | A pub in the Fitzrovia literary circuit, and the drinking was not romantic and it killed several of them
Stage Door Review: The Door Exists So the Cast Never Meets the Audience | A theatre has two circulation systems that never touch, and the whole building is designed to keep two groups apart
Prince of Wales Feathers Review: The Motto Is in German and It Should Not Be | Ich dien – I serve – on the badge of the heir to the English throne, and the origin story is almost certainly false
Flowers of the Forest Review: It Is Only Played at Funerals | A lament for the dead at Flodden, and by convention pipers do not play it except for the dead
Sir Richard Steele Review: He Invented the Magazine | The Tatler and the Spectator created a form that did not exist, and everything you read descends from them
New Inn Review: The Curry House Is a British Invention | Chicken tikka masala was very probably invented here, most curry houses were run by Bangladeshis, and almost none of it is Indian
Abbey Tavern Review: A Tavern Sold Wine and a Pub Sold Beer | The distinction was legal, it mattered enormously, and both words now mean exactly the same thing
King and Queen Review: The Queen Is the Most Powerful Piece and She Used to Be a Vizier | She could move one square diagonally, and then in about fifty years she became the strongest piece on the board
Tapping the Admiral Review: They Drank From the Barrel He Was In | Nelson came home from Trafalgar in a cask of brandy, and the sailors are said to have drilled into it
Thirsty Bear Review: The Bear on the Sign Was Baited | Bankside had bear pits next to the theatres, they were more popular than the plays, and Shakespeare was competing with them
Smugglers Tavern Review: There Was Nothing to Smuggle Here | Bloomsbury is about as far from the sea as central London gets, which makes it a bold choice for a smuggling theme
Marquis of Granby Review: He Bought Pubs for His Wounded Soldiers | He set up his old sergeants as publicans, which is why there are so many pubs named after him, and he died in debt
Dark Horse Review: It Is a Racing Term About Information | A horse nobody has seen run, whose form is unknown, and which the bookmakers cannot price
Devonshire Arms Review: The Goth Pub Has a 4.6 | A subculture that has outlasted every one that mocked it, in a room that has never once apologised for itself
Abbey Arms Review: The Abbey Was One of the Greatest in England and It Is Under a Road | Stratford Langthorne, dissolved, stripped of its lead, and quarried away by the neighbours
Grafton Review: The Duke Was the Illegitimate Son of a King | Charles II acknowledged at least twelve children by seven mistresses and gave dukedoms to several of them
Adam and Eve Review: The Apple Is Not in the Book | Genesis does not say apple, and the whole thing may be a Latin pun that got out of hand
Waterloo Tap Review: A Tap Is Not a Pub and the Word Matters | A taproom was the room where the barrels were, and where the beer had not travelled anywhere at all
Fitzrovia Review: A Pub Named After a District Named After a Pub | The Fitzroy Tavern named the district, and now a pub is named after the district, and the circle is closed
Colonel Fawcett Review: He Died in One of the Last Duels | Shot by his own brother-in-law in Camden Town in 1843, and the outrage effectively ended duelling in England
Duke of York Review: The Second One, and the Rhyme Is a Reusable Insult | It has been attached to at least three different dukes over six hundred years, and Flanders has no hills
George IV Review: Thirty-Four Reviews, and He Is Not a Rating Either | A tiny sample, a ruined reputation, and the man built Regent Street
