This is a book for everyone who has ever wondered why pubs should be called The Cross Keys The Dew Drop Inn or The Hope & Anchor. You'll be glad to know that there are very good
- strange & memorable
- reasons behind them all. After much research about (and in) pubs Albert Jack brings together the stories behind pub names to reveal how they offer fascinating & subversive insights on our history customs attitudes & jokes in just the same way that nursery rhymes do. The Royal Oak for instance commemorates the tree that hid Charles II from Cromwell's forces after his defeat at Worcester; The Bag of Nails is a corruption of the Bacchanals the crazed followers of Bacchus the god of wine & drunkenness; The Cat & the Fiddle a mangling of Catherine La Fidele & a guarded gesture of support for Henry VIII's first Catholic wife Catherine of Aragon; plus many many more. Here too are even more facts about everything from ghosts to drinking songs to the rules of cribbage & shove ha'penny showing that ultimately the story of pub history is really the story of our own popular history.