Best and

worst places to drink

Barry Humphries

As Sickert once said: 'I don't drink and I am a snob.' I used to like places like the French Pub and even the old beatnik Duke of York in Rathbone Place where glassy- eyed desperates with quivering hands and offal-coloured faces roared with mirthless laughter and talked shorthand to each other. But now places like that are my idea of hell. I don't go into them. If you get out of the lions' den alive, don't go back for your hat is what I say. Jeff may be right in thinking all alcoholics are charming, but then he's talking from the other side of the glass and to me the only interesting alkies, and there are a lot of them, are the ones who don't need to drink.

I like a strong drop of tea in a chintz chair at the Basil Street Hotel, or a booze-less mango cocktail touchingly named after me at the Bombay Brasserie, or a glass of water at Le Caprice. Worst place has to be one of the only bars in town that refused to serve me: Muriel's dreadful old Colony Room.

Nicholas Soames

The Smoking Room of the House of Commons is an agreeable place for a drink. Whilst one's enjoyment inevitably hinges on the company, which can sometimes be unfortunate, the drink and the service are excellent. The bar of the Turf Club has the most genial staff; Jimmy dispenses sound racing information with first-class Bloody Marys. I am told reliably that Ian Gow makes the best White Lady south of the Trent.

The most ghastly drinking place that I ever went to was called Zanzibar which lurks somewhere in WC2.

Max Hastings

Since I was 14, there is no pub in England that I have loved as much as the Duke of Cumberland's Arms at Henley, a tiny Sussex village in a loop of the road between Midhurst and Haslemere. If today it is more often crowded with escaping urban refugees like me than with genuine rustics, it remains an enchanting model of the pretty and welcoming country pub, the sort of place one dreams about on the further shores of the world. In London: Green's in Duke Street; any club bar in the top half of St James's Street. The worst: El Vino's with its crowd of impossibly smug, impossibly overweight lawyers; any club from the bottom half of St James's Street down Pall Mall.

Harold Acton

As the fortunate possessor of a winsome and versatile cook — formerly a dressmak- er but she is more interested in cooking than sewing — I eat and drink more at home than in restaurants, which are much of a muchness in Florence and far too noisy with the exception of Harry's Bar. Pasta (every variety of macaroni) is usually palatable in the most unpretentious eating house, but the Florentines prefer eating indoors so there are but few a/ fresco restaurants with tempting fare — a pity where the scenery is so appetising. The pleasantest trattoria which provies a ter- race with a view of umbrageous trees on a stony hillside is the Cave di Maiano be- tween Fiesole and Settignano, refreshingly cool at evening. The food is wholesome but unimaginative. One may count on Parma ham with melon or with figs in season, grilled steak for the carnivorous, and in summer one may rely on vitella tonnata, cold veal sliced with tunny sauce, and a fragrant dish of salad. The red Chianti is more full-bodied than refined and a little of it goes a long way. Wild strawberries are more succulent than the puddings.

Alan Clark

I am sure that whatever I say will be cited as evidence that I am unfit to be a minister, out of touch with ordinary people, etc, etc. Never mind, here goes. In summer time the Ritz dining-room is far the nicest, get a table by the window. If you lose interest in. your companion, scrutiny of the other clients always yields good value. In winter it has to be Wilton's. Booths, conspirator- ial atmosphere, always a few chums.

`Bad' food and drink I refuse, preferring Melba toast and Malvern water.

Patrick Cosgrave

There are three things I dislike about the modern British pub: the licensing hours; the badness of the food and the fact that it is served only during selected hours; and the unwillingness of the bar staff to serve alcohol, either failing to realise who is next, or huddled among themselves in sullen conclave.

There are many watering holes around

SUMMER WINE AND FOOD

the world to which none of these negatives applies. But my favourite is Jenkins' Hill in Washington. There is a vast variety of drink, a friendly but also snap-to-attention staff, and delicious food of all kinds at all hours. I recall one day at 4.30. A perfect dry martini. A magnificent roast beef with trimmings and a wonderful burgundy. Then calvados and coffee. It doesn't mat- ter what you want: they have it. Mr Editor: will you send me to Washington?

John Mortimer

The worst kind pf drinking place is any- where with a great deal of chromium, posters of girls on motorbikes, canned music, Pinacoladas, Florida Blushes, Har- vey Wallbangers, Banana Daiquiris and people in advertising. I also avoid pubs with space invaders, furious barmen with their thumbs in the beer and acrid loos down dark and perilous staircases. The most soothing bar I know is on top of the St George's Hotel by the BBC. It has an astonishing view over London and is very quiet and peaceful in the mornings. The Garrick Club bar is the place in which to start a party at lunchtime; Julie's Wine Bar in Holland Park is an excellent place to go after Rumpole rehearsals and The Bull and Butcher at Turville has Brakspear's bitter. El Vino in Fleet Street has become intoler- able, not only because of its chauvinism but also by its silly bossiness about the way its customers dress. I am quite unable to see the connection between drinking a cheap bottle of claret and wearing a tie, and who wants to look like a barrister anyway?

William Deedes The worst has to be the Charing Cross station bar, not because British Rail does not try hard, but because it is populated by lost souls: men gulping big Scotches before returning to their wives, or men dawdling over pints because they appear to have no one who expects them to return. As to the best, I hardly venture to advise Spectator readers who are such great wine buffs; but on the off-chance you prefer good bitter, don't hate Americans or journalists and can lift your elbow in a crush, first find the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, then order a pint.

Alec Guinness Let us rule out Waterloo Station, which is depressing and only of use if in extremis. I am not a pub man but in recent months in London I have sampled three or four watering holes in SW1 and SW3. Easily my favourite is the Lowndes Arms in Chesham Street, tucked discreetly into a cul-de-sac. It is small, comfortable, quiet and has charming, friendly service. The little group of darts players seems concentrated and provides no danger. At the back and below there is a minute garden with a few tables, which is inviting in summer.

Lord Gowrie I love life in these islands but find our pub culture oppressive. People jostle; beer spills and smells; the sausages look like forensic evidence in a murder case. As for wine, we are a Liebfraumilch-loving na- tion. So my worst places are pubs except for these, the best: the taproom at Llany- blodwel, because John Biffen substitutes it for that arch Clapham omnibus as a foun- tain of good sense; the Crown in Belfast, because of its beauty; and the Three Kings in Naas, because of Miss Cunningham.

Sam White One of these days the French will raise a statue to Stephen Spurrier, a young Eng- lishman who came to Paris some 15 years ago to teach the French a lesson in wines. As a result he started something of a revolution, with wine bars either opened by him or his imitators. They are now known as bistros a yin and have to some extent replaced the steadily disappearing bistros of yesteryear. Spurrier has his headquarters in a charming backwater which is near a market-place called the passage Berryer between the rue Royal and rue Boissy d'Anglas. There he oper- ates as a wine merchant, wine bar prop- rietor and restaurateur. The wine bar, called the Blue Fox, serves food as well as wine and you can eat and drink decently for 85 francs. His restaurant almost along- side is called the Moulin de Village and is particularly pleasant in the summer be- cause of its large terrace and the absence of traffic. A chain of wine bars rivalling Spurrier's pioneering effort called L'Ecluse sits on the Champs Elysees, La Place de La Madeleine and the rue St Honore. They go in for high-quality wines, some costing as much as 80 francs a glass. A particularly attractive bar because of its location is Lc Gourmet's on the Place Dauphine and a particularly attractive terrace is provided by a café on the right bank overlooking the Alma Bridge.

Champs Elysees cafés are to be avoided as being both highly priced and garish and so too are the bars of the major hotels, including that once great favourite among Anglo-American journalists, Le Crillon. This sadly enough has been greatly changed both in decor and its customers, and makes a sad sight for those who knew it in its better days.

The Deux Magots remains an attractive drinking terrace on the Boulevard St Ger- main, but tends to be both pricey and over-crowded in the summer. On the Boulevard Montparnasse there is always La Coupole and the Dome, with the latter enjoying something of a revival owing to the fact that this restaurant has become one of the best in Paris.

Nigel Dempster The fun has gone out of drinking at Ei Vino's — where once journalists held court, now banisters who haunt us in the High Courts, their smug solicitors and faceless office managers (at least I assume this grey element is composed of office managers) line the bar and only the odd fugitive from Fleet Street makes a cursory call to be met by serried ranks of pin-stripe suitings. I have always avoided the ugly drinking places — Muriel's, the French Pub, the Chelsea Arts Club — and seek solace instead at Scribe's, the RAC Long Bar, Foxtrot Oscar and, after midnight, Tramp or Annabel's.

Jeffrey Bernard

My two favourite drinking places in Soho are the Groucho Club and the Coach and Horses. Although I can't afford to drink in the Groucho I do because it is comfortable, clean, yob free, well run and by an efficient and very pleasant staff. It has a nice bar and the added bonus of a writing room upstairs, as well as two restaurants. A proper job.

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The Coach and Horses is like dolly mixture. Actors, hacks, P. Eye, waiters, stagehands, Maltese ponces and hysterical Italians. It is still very cheap for a West End pub. Good nursery food at lunchtime plus a landlord, Norman, Walter Matthau in disguise.

The Colony Room Club — once the legendary Muriel's — is now just about the pits. The carpet is reminiscent of tarmac, you can almost see cockroaches dancing on the piano, but it is probably of great interest to admirers of Hogarth and Row- landson alcohol-ridden drawings., There is a danger that the owner Ian Board's nose might explode into a strawberry split at any minute. The Golden Lion is ideal for gays who like skating on thin ice. Nilsen picked up a couple of his victims there.

Beryl Bainbridge

The best place is the garden of the Duck- worth Arms in NW1 on a summer evening, with the customers falling off the balcony like autumn leaves. Not a large range of drinks, but a good supply of Bells.

The worst place is the 4.10 from Man- chester to Euston on a Monday afternoon, with Brian Redhead, Paul Barker and Alice. The bar is four coaches away, the windows don't open and we've broken down outside Macclesfield during a heat- wave. Dehydration a serious problem, perspiration a social problem, but con- versation something of a bonus.

Alexander Chancellor

They hold farewell parties for those who have left the Telegraph organisation in a cellar, two floors below ground, in the Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street. This has now overtaken the King and Keys next door as the darkest, nastiest drinking place in London. There is nowhere in the whole capital which I would commend.

Kingsley Amis

Best: if I exclude the place where the best company is (my club) and the one where the best drinks are served fastest and in the most generous quantities (my sitting-room) I come to the one that serves the best cocktails (after my sitting-room). This is the Ritz, where they run my own Old- Fashioned close. The surroundings there are grander than my sitting-room. Worst: any pub but for a minority to small to be worth seeking out.

Lord Goodman

I do not drink alcohol and hence have no drinking place. Moreover, I have no favourite place where I drink either tea, coffee, cocoa, Horlicks or Ovaltine. MY tea-drinking is done incessantly in my home or my office. Considerations of privacy and expense would prevent me venturing out every time I needed a cup.

I am sorry to be so unhelpful but I am sure you will have enough debauchees to fill the page.