This entertaining book makes a heartfelt case for why the English pub still matters – and explains how we can save it.

‘Could not be more timely.’ – Owen Hatherley
‘An enjoyable counterpoint to declinist narratives.’ – Jonathan Nunn
‘Clever, charming and powerfully convivial.’ – Emma Warren

In Pubs for the people, Amit Singh and Sivamohan Valluvan offer a daring defence of the humble public house, waging battle against those who see the pub only as a poignant symbol of a bygone England.

Making a journey into the nation’s living room, they blend tales of Singh’s father – the founder of London’s first ‘desi pub’ – with a lively travelogue that carries them from a hipster nightmare in Shoreditch to an izakaya-inspired Eccles pub run by migrants from Hong Kong. Along the way, they take on private equity, yuppie gentrifiers and culture-war blowhards who use the pub as a prop for their rage-baiting patriotism.

Life today can seem lonelier, angrier and poorer than it did before. But as Singh and Valluvan show, the pub offers the inviting prospect of a more equal, sociable and comfortably multiracial England.