I was saddened and slightly shocked to hear that Producer Bill Kenwright has died.
Bill was known as one of the UK theatre industry’s most prolific and successful producers of both plays and musicals. His long-running hits included more than 10,000 performances of Willy Russell’s musical Blood Brothers.
The producer’s death was announced this afternoon in a statement from his partner Jenny Seagrove and daughter Lucy Kenwright, which said Bill had passed away “peacefully” on Monday October 23, following “a long battle with illness”.
I’m thinking of his friends – particularly Julius Greene – and his family.
An unusual walking tour that includes talks and performances, the London Literary Pub Crawl explores the favoured watering holes of the city’s famous writers.
The Sherlock Holmes pub in St James’s, London (Breznay Andras/Wikimedia Commons)
Sitting with a quill and paper for hours at a time couldn’t have been easy. Perhaps that’s why most novelists, playwrights, and poets, down the centuries, nursed a pint – or two – at the neighbourhood pub every evening. They weren’t the only ones! Historians, diarists, philosophers, and other authors also routinely gathered at taverns and boozers to let off steam and connect with the community.
Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Pepys, Alexander Pope, Mark Twain, Alfred Tennyson, William Thackeray, Arthur Conan Doyle, David Garrick… the list of the pub clientele across London reads like a who’s who of the writing establishment. Many of these impresarios of the literary world often found inspiration in the local public house where they regularly ate, drank, discussed, thought, ideated, and worked.
To know more about the connection between authors, their writing process, and pubs, I decided to sign up for the London Literary Pub Crawl, a theatrical tourist attraction, performance tour, and guided walk. This artist-led walking tour, arranged by the not-for-profit charity Maverick Theatre Company, explores the watering holes of some of London’s most famous writers, and involves talks by local writers and performances by artists from London’s West End and the UK TV and film industry.
Nick Hennegan started the Maverick Theatre Company, which arranges the London Literary Pub Crawl. (Courtesy the subject)
Nick Hennegan started the theatre company as a means of increasing access to the performing arts “through the presentation of contemporary classics and new works in mainly non-theatre environments”.
Hennegan’s background is strictly non-artistic or academic, he says, adding that a succession of events led him to work on a radio show with “lots of lovely Oxbridge University types” where he realised that appreciating art and culture was “not about intelligence, but an opportunity”.
In 1994, he started the Maverick Theatre Company to attract new audiences to the theatre and began producing contemporary classics and presenting them in non-formal theatre spaces – mainly pubs. “Which is, of course, how Shakespeare started!” he says. His adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V as a one-person show, Henry V – Lion of England, was picked up by producers after one performance in Birmingham, taken to Edinburgh Fringe, and went on to tour the world.
At the Fitzroy Tavern (Courtesy the London Literary Pub Crawl)
Hennegan believes that the London Literary Pub Crawl (launched in 2012) probably “would not have happened if I’d been from London, but “being from Birmingham in the English Midlands I had a ‘tourist’s’ eye”.
He soon found new inspiration in Fitzrovia, more specifically in the Fitzroy Tavern, a pub that famously hosted George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, and Lawrence Durrell among others.
“When I finally came full-time to London to go to university, a friend from Birmingham told me that if I wanted a cheap beer, I should go to the Fitzroy Tavern. It was relatively cheap for London but I noticed downstairs they’d got a bar called the Writers and Artists Bar. (The bar now houses the toilets!) I saw photos of famous writers and artists on the walls… I thought if all these people had come here, there must be some stories to tell. So I started researching and, sure enough, there were some great stories!” he says.
Finding liquid inspiration in Fitzrovia (Courtesy the London Literary Pub Crawl)
Hennegan soon put together a two-person script, with audiences being greeted and shown around by Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens. The actors stayed in character throughout the show, although they became other characters at various pubs to illustrate different stories.
“As we are a theatre company, rather than a travel company or a commercial outfit, we weren’t really sure how to promote it,” he recalls. But the show went on. Soon, overseas tourists started to attend and just before the lockdown a journalist wrote a story that appeared all over the world. “The phones and the emails didn’t stop! We were looking at hundreds every day and I was recruiting new teams of actors. But, two weeks later we got locked down with Covid-19,” he recalls.
Three years on, things have picked up well for the literary pub crawl, and I see why. Hennegen’s literary walk brings together books, authors, stories, histories, and liquor to create a sense of place and time. And allows attendees to learn about authors and their work in a completely new way.
Events at this pub might have inspired The Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (Courtesy the London Literary Pub Crawl)
We kick off at the pub where Welsh poet Dylan Thomas met and fell in love with his wife, and then meander through the streets of Fitzrovia and across the ‘Great Divide’ (as it’s sometimes known locally!), Oxford Street – into Soho.
“Soho is an area known for years for its creativity and characters. We don’t go into all the pubs for drinks as that would be very difficult but we have three or four stops – again, depending on the group. This is a pub crawl so the people on it are important. We look at half a dozen pubs that have stories relevant to today,” he says.
The performance tour, which lasts anywhere between three to four hours, goes through the public houses of Soho and Fitzrovia and highlights the writers and artists they inspired. The guided walk includes sites visited by authors, poets and thinkers such as TS Eliot, Karl Marx, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Virginia Woolf. It also takes in some contemporary spaces, including those relevant to songwriters such as Sir Paul McCartney, Jimi Hendrix, and Damien Hirst.
The actor made up to look like Charles Dickens has plenty to say as we trudge along. Re-enactments of key moments in Britain’s literary history add much interest as do the anecdotes that reveal some of the events and occurrences that shaped some of British literature’s most famous works.
The pub where Dylan Thomas met his wife Caitlin Macnamara (Courtesy the London Literary Pub Crawl)
As the tour is conducted by artists, things sometimes go off-script! “One of our current ‘Charles’ often gets so carried away, one tour he did lasted 14 hours! Also, because we are artists, the people on the tour are very much a part of the mix, along with the script, performance, and places. So the duration very much depends on the individuals who are on the tour,” Hennegen says.
The tour covers just over a mile, and is basically an amble, but sensible shoes and an umbrella are always a good idea. Apart from a quiz and multiple readings, the tour offers a closer look at things you would probably not notice if you weren’t told where to look. Fragments of social history are “often tucked away in the fabric of old buildings, usually above the eye line or down an alleyway”, and this tour helps unearth that with snippets about authors now renowned the world over. The crawl ends as it began – in a pub – most likely with a pint and sing-song to finish the day.
The British pub is now an institution, one that’s crucial for communities – especially after the pandemic. The founder of the pub crawl believes that pubs are important, “perhaps now more than ever”.
“I do most things in the pub. I wrote Henry V – Lion of England at a pub in Birmingham and my second Shakespeare adaptation, Hamlet – Horatio’s Tale, which attracted the talent of legendary actor Sir Derek Jacobi, in a pub. My third play, A Ghost Of A Chance, won a Guinness Award through the Royal National Theatre and was written in a pub,” he says.
Pubs on Old Compton Street, Soho, central London (cktravels.com / Shutterstock)
Maverick Theatre Company works with numerous artists and aims to give everyone a fair chance. “Coming on the London Literary Pub Crawl means you are supporting a new generation of London writers,” Hennegan says.
The company is about to start a tour at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it will present a new play, The Birth of Frankenstein, this August. It will also release two books in Spring 2024: The Good (Literary) Pubs Guide and Plays Down The Pub – How to Make A Crisis Out of A Drama (the story of Maverick).
Hennegan is also doing more to further the cause of the English pub. He recently launched Bohemian Britain, which offers podcasts, blogs, reviews, and videos about pubs, writers, attractions, theatre, and a bohemian lifestyle in modern Britain.
Meanwhile, what about those who cannot get to London to enjoy the pub crawl? “We’ve not announced it yet, but we are going to try and do a virtual literary pub crawl in autumn, one that anyone in the world can join online,” Hennegan says.
A random chat with Gerry O’Brian, legendary late landlord of The Churchill Arms in Kensington, London. He kisses the doors! Sorry about poor audio quality.
Thirty-something and things not going so well? Wouldn’t it be great if Dad came to stay?
🍷🍷🍷🍷 (Our Bo-Ho star equivalent. 4 out of 5!)
Photo: Matt Collins.
In an interesting social twist this new, warm-hearted comedy by local writer E.J. Anderson resonates on many levels.
Cara and Matt’s flat is shabby chic without the chic. It’s a bit grim and they are at loggerheads with their neglectful landlord, who now has men positioned outside the property ready to enter and repossess..
Against this backdrop and in anticipation of a first dinner with Matt’s parents, Cara uses hairspray to try and mask the dank odour of the flat. But she doesn’t have to worry – the dinner doesn’t happen as planned, as Matt’s Mother dumps his father Robert at their front door – Robert has been firmly and finally booted out of the marital home. The reasons are initially unclear, although it seems to have something to do with some flowers he has pruned. Oh, then we find out later about the affair. Oh, and another former wife. Oh, and a few other things…!
His tie is snipped in half. But it turns out Robert did it himself as a protest. He’s had enough of being a wage-slave. Kind of a late mid-life crisis.
The couple ask him to say with them “for as long as he needs.”
The premise of E.J. Anderson’s play boasts a wealth of comic potential and some very timely commentary on the cost-of-living crisis and ‘generation rent’. It also addresses that rarely illuminated topic of older men assessing their place in the world.
So what seems at first to be a cosy family social event turns rapidly into something much more. In fact, the one problem with this comedy is that there is almost too much. When we find out good natured Robert has not only split from his wife but he’s also being pursued by a local property developer teetering on the cusp of gangsterism, it’s an example of how there are SO many story strands., it could do with a bit more focus and editing.
But it’s still hugely appealing as it cleverly and subtly addresses a number of contemporary issues… parents living longer, the brutality and benefits of capitalism and social erosion. I especially loved the drunken, post-dinner, family scene in Act One and the cast are universally brilliant. There are also some great lines, “Boomer Bob” and parts move into near farce.
So in spite of a few faults take your Dad – and your Mom too – to see this. It works brilliantly in the space and is another example of this small studio theatre in West London once again hitting above its weight and presenting great theatre by local artists with great actors. Nothing delinquent about that!
