Following an interesting talk to the Coventry Society by Chris Arnot on 10th October, our Chair, Peter Walters, has written the following review of Chris’s book for the benefit of members who were not able to attend. Peter writes……
As a feature writer of some renown, Chris Arnot could turn his hand to any subject. But there was always a special place in his heart for the pub.
In his book ‘Closing time. Lockdown reflections on a pubscrawling past’, Chris pays a return visit to some of the many establishments around the country that he had written about in a long career as a freelance, writing about pubs for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, among many others.
Published in 2021, the book boasts a wonderful gallery of characters in some far-flung corners of the drinking trade, brought gloriously to life by Chris’s unerring nose for the eccentric and vivid turn of phrase.
There’s the redoubtable Mabel Mudge, who spent 75 of her 99 years pulling pints in her Devon village pub, Nelson-obsessed landlord Les Winter in deepest Norfolk and the legend that was Mavis Ogden, landlady of the Dyers Arms in Spon End.
The pubs too creak with character in all their timeless and sometimes fusty finery. From city, hamlet, suburb and country lane Chris has unearthed many of the gems that made the pub itself such a wonderful invention.
As it sweeps across the country, Closing Time follows the contours of the author’s own life, from his youth in Birmingham to university in Lancaster, a first job in London and then journalism in Nottingham and later Coventry.
It’s an extended love letter to a world that Chris, like many, fears is passing. But it won’t vanish entirely while he’s still writing about it.
Closing Time is published by Takahe Publishing at £11.95.