George Orwell, a man fond of a pint, wrote about his fantasy pub, The Moon Under Water, in his EVENING STANDARD column - 'two minutes from the bus stop where drunks and rowdies never seemed to find their way ... where there was no music and motherly barmaids called you ''dear'' while pouring pints in red china mugs.' That was the 1940s. Today our high streets have been taken over by cheapened identikit lounge bars (the Wetherspoon chain has fourteen Moon Under Waters), and the pub, as a cornerstone of British life, has never been more under threat. What with smoking bans and the cost of a pint being roughly equivalent to the price of a multipack from a supermarket, there are scores of pubs closing every week. In search of the perfect pub, Paul Moody and Robin Turner head off in pursuit of pubs that fizz with independence and a true frontier spirit, along the way raising a glass to 2,000 years of British brewing history. It's partly an account of their road trip around Britain researching THE ROUGH PUB GUIDE, and partly a deeper investigation into why British pub culture is the toast of the world.

Author Biography

Paul Moody is a writer whose work has appeared in the NME, Time Out, Uncut, Arena and the Guardian. Robin Turner works for Heavenly Recordings, where he started the legendary Heavenly Sunday Social in 1994. He's the co-creator of The Social chain of bars in London, Bristol and Nottingham.