The Last Landlady: An English Memoir

'An eclectic mix of social history and elegy, ironic comedy and indelible Englishness. It is about the pub as theatre' The Spectator

Laura Thompson's grandmother Violet was one of the great landladies. Born in a London pub, she became the first woman to be given a publican's licence in her own name. Just as pubs defined her life, she seemed in many ways to embody their essence.

Laura spent part of her childhood in Violet's Home Counties establishment, mesmerised by her gift for cultivating t...