Jackie Wesley

In the few months since I wrote this blog about ‘our’ pub, the Ancient Briton has won – count them – four awards:

Welsh Pub of the Year;

Welsh Eatery of the Year;

Welsh Gastropub of the Year;

First Place, Welsh Good Food Awards.

As I said before, it seems that the owners, Nils and Emma, are doing something right.

It so happens that we have a…[Read more]

I have little nostalgia for the pubs of my earlier days, mainly because the pubs in Sutton, where I spent most of my life, were, and are, a pretty sorry lot. But there is one pub I remember with a certain affection.

Watling Street, which becomes the Edgware Road, that arterial road that runs in a straight line through North-West London, starts…[Read more]

Mention of plain-looking pubs reminds me of another pub with a heart-warming story, the Hope in Carshalton, near where I used to live and even nearer to where I grew up. In appearance a nondescript 1930s local, it was going to close down until a bunch of its customers got together and bought the lease, and then a few years later the pub outright.…[Read more]

Actually there was a bit of a wobbly phase on the ale front for the first year or two of the new regime, while Nils, who is not himself a real ale drinker, was finding out by trial and error what would sell. There was a heavy emphasis on those light golden bitters that are fashionable these days, but are not much to my taste (unless it’s hot…[Read more]

You’re not actually the person I was referring to when I said I knew I was preaching to the converted. Quite often people reply to these Literary Byways blogs saying they’re going to read the book concerned on my recommendation, but this is the first time I’ve had feedback on that, and I’m delighted that you share my enthusiasm for Pavane.

As for…[Read more]

No, there’s little or nothing to tell you a railway had ever been there. A short stretch at the Tralee end re-opened in the nineties with one of the original locomotives, but it only seems to have lasted less than twenty years. There’s still a Tralee and Dingle Railway Preservation Society page on Facebook, though.

It must have been well over thirty years ago, on holiday in North Wales, when, after visiting Beddgelert, we went for a riverside walk along what must have been the Aberglaslyn Pass. Noting the width and smoothness of the footpath and how it bored its way straght through some rocky outcrops, I remarked wistfully that we must be on the trackbed of…[Read more]

I think I should belatedly clarify my last post by saying that, whether you believe that striking and picketing are right or wrong, that’s not the point I was making. The fact remains that the Labour Party was originally founded to represent the trade unions in Parliament, so Starmer’s action was a betrayal of everything the party once stood for.

No, I can’t say I’m impressed with Starmer’s ‘Labour’ party. So little so, that, given that we live in a rock-solid Labour seat and that it was plain the Tories were going to get hammered anyway, I was quite glad we were in the far West of Ireland on polling day and so had an excuse not to vote. How can a party leader who disciplines one of his…[Read more]