People in pubs: a very British love affair

“There are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see,” I joke, striding past Dirty Dicks pub on Kingsland Road like I’m in a low-budget indie film. It’s a sunny Saturday, and I’m on my way to the ‘People in Pubs’ exhibition at The Second Act Gallery, hidden just off Arnold Circus. It feels a bit like I’m in the music video for Bittersweet Symphony – dodging hen parties in matching sashes and lads shouting at pub TVs like the football can actually hear them. 

Let’s face it: Britain doesn’t just like pubs – we treat them like holy ground. Sure, we drink too much and pretend that scampi fries are a balanced meal, but the pub is more than that. It’s a public house: our shared living room, therapy session, and community centre rolled into one. What we might call the ‘local’, sociologists call a ‘third space’ – one outside our home or work environment that enriches social cohesion and community.

My friend once told me that there are “more pubs in the UK than there are McDonald’s in the world.” I’m not sure how true that is, but it is believable, and that says a lot. Recently more and more pubs are closing down, decimated by austerity and a Covid hangover (although this was happening before the pandemic). A Guardian article last year stated that in 2024, around 34 pubs shut each month. ‘People in Pubs’ is more than just about raising a glass to the heart (and hangover) of British culture, it’s also a call to arms to protect it. Curated by Alex Zawadzki, the group show includes work by artists Robin Broadley, Jim Brook, Jack Brown, Grace Clifford, RJ Fernandez, Leo Fitzmaurice, Laura Greenhalf, Jamie Holman, Adam Jones, Eleanor McLean and Richard Shields. J Mark Dodds’ writing on the show describes the erosion of the pub as a “symptom of vulture capitalism, the same malignant dysfunction that’s hollowing out our services, our utilities, our democracy.” Where do we go when there’s nothing left? The pub is a cornerstone of Albion life, it’s ingrained in the public psyche. As austerity has destroyed public spaces over the last decade (and more), this manifestation of political hostility has reared its head around every town across the UK. “The fight for the pub is the fight for the soul of Britain,” says Dodds.

Pubs aren’t just for pints and pub quizzes. They’ve always been our unofficial town halls – places where communities come together, where ideas are passed around as freely as the peanuts, and where life’s big moments often unfold. My nan told me about her wedding reception in her local East End pub. Everyone brought a plate of sarnies, pints flowed, and somehow it was perfect. No frills – just laughter, love, and the smell of pickled eggs in the air. The pub is a place that has always been central to the working-class experience. When she passed away last year, her wake was held, of course, in the pub. We shared stories, raised glasses, and celebrated her the way she would’ve wanted: surrounded by people, with the jukebox playing Elvis slightly too loudly. It was funny and messy and painfully beautiful. 

‘People in Pubs’ doesn’t just spotlight working-class artists, but it does so with nuance, tenderness, and crucially, accessibility. This isn’t art that talks down or locks people out; it invites them in. ‘This isn’t just about beer,” says curator Alex Zawadzki. “It’s about Britain’s cultural memory. About who gets to gather, and where. It’s about the privatisation of community – and the fight to reclaim it.” It’s a timely reminder that the pub isn’t just a backdrop for pints and banter; it’s a contested space, rich with history and politics.

Of course, the pub, and more notably those who dominate those spaces, have been typically a safe haven for white, heterosexual men, and not so much for others. Lest we forget the ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ posters adorned around pubs and boarding houses in the 1950s. And there has certainly been a noticeable drive in the romanticisation of the ‘old man pub’ in recent years among younger generations and a certain genre of London creatives (of which I can’t pretend not to be part of). Maybe it’s nostalgia for a time we never actually lived through, or maybe it’s a reaction to the increasingly hollow ways we connect – DMs, dating apps and doomscrolls. The pub offers a space for personal connection. You can hardly move in pubs like Deptford’s The Dog and Bell on a Friday night.

There’s something quite haunting about the works in the show. Jack Brown’s Covered Fruit Machine – a slot machine draped in a white sheet, its lights flickering faintly beneath – feels eerily like a body in a morgue, a quiet elegy for a fading culture. It’s as much an object of ephemera as it is a warning: a ghost of the social fabric we risk losing. Jamie Holman’s A Memory of People in Pubs echoes this – grainy, time-worn images of punters with out-of-date haircuts, frozen mid-toast, verbarations from a half-forgotten past. There’s a sense that the air in these places still holds their presence – the dust of those who drank, laughed, argued, and lived here before us, still floating quietly around the room.

Grace Clifford’s bronze pub stool pays tribute to the unnoticed furniture of our lives – the things we sit on, lean against, spill drinks on – now cast in permanence. It’s a kind of everyday monument, immortalising the overlooked props of social connection, the silent witnesses to our loudest nights and softest conversations. Similarly, The Lovers Pub by Eleanor McLean consists of a painting of two white plastic garden chairs sitting side by side, floating in clouds. Ella, the gallery assistant, explained to me that the artist’s parents met in a pub. These mundane (but iconic) objects of our everyday lives sit in the backdrop while life happens all around them. They’re part of the furniture. I’m still looking for my white chair moment 😉

By the window of the gallery next to the press releases and show leaflets were a number of artist editions by Jamie Holman and laser etched drawings from Chas and Dave’s Christmas Knees Up, a television show that was first broadcast in 1982 in an East End pub. The drawings are delicate and barely there, like the residue left behind when wallpaper is ripped from walls. For only £40, I thought it would be rude not to buy one. I left the show with it tucked under my arm and walked down the road to meet my sister in a nearby pub. After a couple of pints, we left to get to the tube. As I was about to tap through the gate, I suddenly gasped, realising I didn’t have Jamie’s print on me. SHIT. Panic. 

I legged it back to the pub, weaving through the crowds like a person possessed. And there it was. Still sat on the windowsill where I’d left it, untouched, waiting. Lucky, or maybe something a little more fateful. That moment, as small as it was, captured everything the exhibition spoke to. The pub as memory, as anchor, as ghost and gathering place. The way we keep returning to places, to people, to stories. ‘People in Pubs’ isn’t just about nostalgia or sentimentality, it’s a call to notice what we’re losing and to fight – quietly, lovingly, stubbornly – to hold onto it. As our public spaces are hollowed out, priced out, and paved over, the public house stands stubbornly as one of the last places that still belongs to everyone. Come in, sit down, stay a while.