Pubs for the people : The fight for the pint and the nation

Author: Valluvan, Sivamohan

England

Published on 20 October 2026 by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS in the United Kingdom.

Hardback | 272 pages, 3 black & white illustrations
223 x 147 x 29 | 412g

A heartfelt case for why the English pub still matters and how we can save it.

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. -- .