Anyone who taken a train out of Euston Station knows that the departing vehicles don’t move nearly as quickly as jet-propelled ones. But before the Space Age, they might have seemed so. The Rocket was one of the last (non-brewing) Firkins, a chain of mostly brew pubs that offered cask ale — a traditionally produced, super-fermentated, unfiltered, unpasteurized and naturally carbonated beer stored in, duh, a cask. Through a number of business transactions, Bass Ale eventually acquired the majority of the pubs. But prior to that, Firkin pubs issues a "passport,” in which would be travellers would obtain a stamp from each pub visited, as well as public transport directions to the nearest pub. Some people would complete the Firkin Crawl (visiting 12 pubs) in a month, maybe a year, and thus get their Free T-Shirt. But the English with their extremities: the goal soon became to complete a Firkin Pub Crawl in a day.
The pub must have promised too many shirts, as the Firkins Chain closed in the UK in 2013 — cask ale lovers thought all was lost. A year laster, The Rocket appeared, a striking pub with a Grade II Victorian exterior built in 1899 by Shoebridge & Rising for Cannon Brewery. Although the pub is three storeys, it is set back from Euston Road with single storey extension of one bay. The top floor of the pub has an attic storey in large Flemish gables, with one that features a carved plaque of the sun rising over the sea. It is inscribed "Rebuilt 1899".
A brief request: Journalism is still a very tough business to keep going. If you enjoy this blog, please become a paid subscriber or support me on my Go Fund Me or by buying my art on my website. Every dollar counts.
The “tennis numpty” in all the gear but no idear,” in the middle of her hotly contested hear of the Brompton World Championships.
Truest Test of Englishness? The Brompton Championships
There exist few tests of true English assimilation: engaging proper weather talk (and owning an enviable umbrella); downing five pints of Newkie (Newcastle) Brown Ale without falling over; and picking a football team and sticking with it through relegation. Anglophiles who have not successfully achieved the normal bona fides, might choose the competition route, thus becoming champion cheddar-rollers, torch-bearing Bonfire associées or bog snorkellers.
A shot of the Men’s final of the 2025 Brompton World Championships.
But above all other contests, one stands alone: assembling and riding as fast as possible the tiny-tired, two-wheeler with the super long seat pole on an improvised track in the area surrounding Kings Cross train station. And do it all in “fancy dress,” King’s English for “costume.” In other words, becoming a Brompton World Champion.
Desperate American expats do desperate things.
The tennis numpty with Man of the Purple waiting for their heats to be called.
New Yorkers once regularly rode Bromptons, renowned for their compactness and portability, especially on commuter trains. But ultimately they just didn’t look cool, making them unideal for any self-respecting Manhattanite, Brooklynite or even Queens commuter — forget about the Bronx — to coast anywhere in public. Thus, Brompton has one tiny store in SoHo, while in England, the 50-year-old brand is a household name.
That still doesn’t make them easy to ride, let alone race.
The women’s final of the 2025 Brompton World Championships. La Luchadero almost edged out the office worker in the heat.
“The Brompton is actually nimble; its tires are wide, giving it a lot of ground to grip; they can accelerate really quickly,” says Man of the Purple, a mechanic, cycling advocate and owner of at least two Bromptons. By this time, however, Purple Man didn’t have to do much to convince a certain American journalist who had never ridden, let alone, folded and unfolded a Brompton, to compete in its commuter-bike championships. She had just come off a three-week ban from her tennis club for “being rude.” A transformation was needed.
First, came the fold-unfold practice. A true Bromptonite can do it in about 25 seconds flat. Fail in this element, and one might as well call it a race. “Last year, we watched some poor man get looped twice before he could even get going,” says Man of the Purple’s partner of more than 20 years. “But he didn’t give up; we all cheered.” After a few running starts in Purples’ family kitchen, this journalist could assemble hers in about two minutes, at best. “Just practice ten times before you go to bed tonight,” Purple’s wife says, “and you’ll have it down, no problem.” The fear had already been planted, however. Would this New Yorker ever fit in with the English?
El Luchador looking to wrestle anyone who might challenge him for the finish.
The next barrier: fancy dress. Costumes of English school boy, French baker and Peaky Blinder were ruled out, as neither a prep school-patch, a beret, nor a set of braces and a bow tie could be procured in time — even from a school uniform shop in Islington’s Chapel Market. “We have a strict school-only policy on those,” said a friendly, if unhelpful, employee at Rough Cut Casuals, the merchant of nearly 50 local academies’ regalia. “You have to have an ID.” With’ “Man of the Purple’s” matchy-matchy ensemble of purple vest, hat, shoes, sunglasses and Brompton threatening to take yet another English award, a “tennis numpty” getup was thrown together: white shorts, white West Side Tennis Club branded polo, white Queens Club branded cap, two vintage racquets in a backpack and white Stan Smiths. Job done.
The first couple of fruit — Mr. Banana and Mrs. Orange.
Lastly, the race. Tennis white donned, racquets in pack, menacing look tested, the tennis eejit, Man of the Purple and Purple’s partner made their way on Saturday morning toward the Brompton booth at Coal Drops Yard, the former industrial compound redesigned by Thomas Heatherwick into a massive outdoor dining, shopping and working complex right off the Camden branch of houseboat-laden Regent’s Canal. “I’m not sure a big loop for Brompton bicycles was in the works for this place when they redesigned it,” mused Man of the Purple’s partner.
While race bibs were acquired and pinned, and chips zip-tied to Brompton forks, all manner of Bromptonites strolled by: Mr. Banana and Mrs. Orange; the HMS Brompton with midriff-centered, cardboard-made ship; Union-Jack top hats and tails; Where’s Waldos; German Ricola men in Lederhosen; and a personal favorite, a luchador with his luchadora ready to wrestle for the finish. Each surveyed the roughly .75-kilometer track, which had to be looped five times in the assigned heat, then settled in for the wait, while offering opinions on the £2,999 special edition Tour de France Brompton, which one could use to “Allez, Every Day!” No self-respecting Englishman cared too much for it.
The HMS Brompton ready to coast off.
Finally, Heat Nine was called. The tennis numpty set up her borrowed and folded Brompton, lined up with the office workers and Willy Wonkas, and waited for the emcee to yell “Ready, Steady, Go!” Remembering Pedal, Handlebars, Seat and Frame (PHSF) ,she nonethless faffed with the clamps, and was the second to last off the line. Recalling Man of the Purple’s words the night before, however — “there’s something that I see in you that other Brompton riders just don’t have” — the tennis numpty kicked her aggression acquired riding New York City streets into high gear, passed another middle-aged women in suit and flats and a heavy-set newspaper boy to cheers of “Go Wimbledon!” By the time the fifth uphill was tackled in first gear and the finish line crossed, tennis numpyt had channeled all the Taxi-dodging and pedestrian-swearing into an age-group-appropriate first-place finish, certificate to prove it. The Man of the Purple, who came in a respectable top-20, was chuffed — maybe a little gobsmacked. Word is still out from the Home Office.
Thanks for reading Letter from a London Pub! This post is public so feel free to share it.
The Shakespeare’s Head pub near Carnaby Street in SoHo was owned in the 1700s by a distant relative, one John Shakespeare. Above the crowd of mead-drinkers, a bust of the bard looks down on us all.
Acting! It is a thing the Brits do best. Every personal display is an act, thus meaning that most British people don’t necessary have to go to acting school to become pros. Past generations train future ones to consistently put on a public show of good faith, interest, comedy, feigned tragedy or other. If a youngster attains a position at one of the many of the consrvatories across the country, especially the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), parents and friends acclaim them — this person is supremely English — and thus, could possibly never utter a sincere word again.
One never knows in dealing with even the average Brit if it is a role or the real person. There is a reason for this: shame and honor. The British live in consistent fear of looking ridiculous, becoming the butt of a joke, or most importantly, being talked about behind one’s back. There exist the What’s App channels to organize events and then there are the back channels used solely to heap scorn on certain members of the first What’s App group. The English “take the piss” out of themselves before anyone else can do it. And lastly, the stoicism that is so endemic across the country — the one that has caused a massive mental health crisis and loads of addiction issues — is praised relentlessly. So much so, that Brits feel as if they can only be themselves if under the influence of some substance or having a full-on breakdown. The reason Brits and Americans (and the French) have such discord has everything to do with this stoicism, which makes all of us with real emotions feel like outsiders or imposters or the enemy — most of the time. Instead of crying on subways, as in New York, we cry in bathrooms and corners. Or try to stiffen that quivering upper lip.
Shakespeare was a master of the duplicity of the British, picking up on it as early as the 16th century. Lampooning it in his comedies, As You Like It or The Merchant of Venice — and even in his tragedies. Another human being would never see an Englishman questioning whether “to be or not to be” or his wife screaming at a spot, ala Macbeth. It was a master stroke then to put the bard in window overlooking his pub in the heart of SoHo, watching (and perhaps laughing) at all the English interactions.
A brief request: Journalism is still a very tough business to keep going. If you enjoy this blog, please become a paid subscriber or support me on my Go Fund Me or by buying my art on my website. Every dollar counts.
The Shakespeare’s Head on Carnaby Street is probably the most original of all the Shakespeare pubs in England, even though its origins are a bit dodgy. Originally licensed in 1753 to John and Thomas Shakespeare, allegedly distant relatives of the famous playwright, William Shakespeare had no direct descendants and died 119 years before the pub was built. The name, however, did help the pub attract more customers, as did the Shakespeare bust peeping out of the pub’s upstairs window. Added around 1900, the bust was possibly more than just a head, as it has a missing hand, apparently due to World War II bomb damage. In fact, nothing of the original establishment remains — the building which stands today is late nineteenth-century, Tudor style.
As most old pubs, the Shakespeare’s Head has probably witnessed untold stories. Great Marlborough Street, on which the Shakespeare’s head is located, boasted two main landmarks: a legendary magistrates court where high-profile cases were heard, and a private anatomy school. Anatomist Joshua Brookes ran a private anatomy school from his Great Marlborough Street home in the late 1700s, where would-be doctors could experiment on bodies — for free, A beer after a hard day was provided by The Shakespeare’s Head. When the anatomy fad faded, the Marlborough Street Magistrates Court charge sheet read like a celebrity Who’s Who: John Lennon for exhibiting sexually explicit pictures; Bob Monkhouse for defrauding film distribution companies; Christine Keeler for Profumo; Keith Richards for possession of heroin, mandrax, marijuana, a revolver and an antique shotgun, as well as Mick Jagger, Lionel Bart, Johnny Rotten and Francis Bacon, also for drugs.
Street Saviour: Ann couldn’t help herself in London. Could I? Part II (Part I is here.)
An Irish Traveller burial plot in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Members of the Traveller community have in recent years erected large, elaborate headstones that, depending on perspective, are moving testaments to grief and loss or garish spectacles of brinkmanship.
Wednesday
After another kind Uber driver dropped us at my flat and Ann dragged herself up the stairs, we settled in to the previous night’s routine, with her taking up the couch and me uprooting my 14-year-old cat, Dorothy, so I could sit on Dotrothy’s favourite chair. Ann was not eating much, as she had not done an English “poo” in about a week, so I left her to her shows and the green juice I bought her earlier in the day. Again, she was playing games on her phone, but also texting here and there with her mother in Bermuda and her church down in Bromley. Evidently, her mother, a retired Jamaican nurse, had gone from advising her to eat mashed baby prunes to relieve her bowels to trying out some steamed vegetables. And in other news, the pastor of Ann’s church in Bromley wanted to take her in for housing, but he had to consult the church council.
Here we go, I thought, as I took my headphones out of my ears, yet another council to make some decision on Ann’s future. But I wasn’t exactly sitting on Dot’s chair seething. I hadn’t actually minded someone just sort of being around, even though Anne would interrupt my writing flow o fret about “pushing too hard for a poo” and hemorrhoids and whether she was going to have them for the rest of her life.
“No, Ann, you’ll be fine,” I told her. “Want me to run across the street to the off-license (the “offie” or corner store where all manner of people could buy alcohol and other needed items past regular hours, but mostly alcohol) and buy you a laxative? It will help.” She fretted about some allergy or something to laxatives — she was already wearing Depends undergarments at the age of 50 — and turned it down. I tried to let it go, remembering there but for the grace of god and my family go I.
Grand paino as monument commemorating Harry Thornton, a concert pianist who, with his wife, entertained the troops during World War I; he died during the 1918 flu epidemic
When not summoned by Ann, I rediscovered some old music on my headphones and answered emails and What’s Apps regarding a refugee project I had going on in Iraq. I also made some attempts at writing, but that was possibly a bit ambitious on my end, as noise from the tele and Ann’s utterances just broke my concerntration. Finally, I decided bed was a good idea and we said our goodnights again, as the cats and I headed back to my room. “Adrian, I just want you to know that you have the kindest heart in the world,” Ann told me. “You are so open and I am so grateful to you.”
There it was: the flattery. I had heard it before and I had uttered it myself to my older brother and younger sister to try and thank them for the help they had given me over the years. Ann’s sounded as hollow as probably my own entreaties — people wanted action, not words. They wanted to see my life dramatically improve; like, improve overnight. I wanted see instant success with Ann, too, as if my couch and the Ginger Beers I bought her and the fish and chips and green juices and some clean tote bags and that spare travel thing of Chanel Chance perfume I found Ann would cause her to throw off her crutches, walk upstraight, declare herself fit for purpose and be on her way.
But all at once, I saw my past and potential future flash in my brain, remembering when my brother came to pick me up from hospital following a week-long bender in October 2008. I had decided I would rather be a gutter drunk than go to another AA meeting. At those, popularity was based on the number of days one had sober, and to me, the cliquiness of the sober lesbians felt like the female bullies of my old prep school. As I was in rent arrears a month for my beloved Brooklyn flat — my first solo home — Jim had moved all my stuff into his basement and held his resulted anger deep down in the bottom of his gut. I made sure to walk thre paces behind him on his march to Union Square for the subway home. We said little to each other until we reached his shared house in Park Slope — in urban myth the one where Toni Morrison had written Beloved (she didn’t, but lived there afterward). He showed me my room and set out my the routine: 90 meetings in 90 days, keep everything spit-shine clean and otherwise try to sort out a new place and a new life in a month. Yet, for a few fleeting hours, I sank into the bed downstairs from my big brother feeling like I was home for the first time in possibly 22 years — back to 1986, before my parents commenced their ugly divorce.
With its death mask, Warner Bros-style initials and proximity to Karl Marx's grave, the headstone of Malcolm McLaren, bon vivant, manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls in Highgate cemetery.
“Ann, it’s all fine. And no, I am not any kind of angel or whatever. I am, actually, a bitch.” Earlier that day, I had received an email notice that my tennis club had issued me a three-week suspension for “being rude” to a longtime member on the day of my aunt’s death. In an open letter to a proudly Japanese women’s captain, who aimed to use me yet again as a mouthpiece for club politicking, I had told her in no uncertain terms that I wanted no part of the team, let alone try outs. Apparently, telling her that the 14-year-olds at my native Oklahoma prep school did a better job of choosing winning teams than a London club in the country where lawn tennis was invented was a gigantic American insult. It had also been a big no-no to identify someone by their ethnicity, yet another rule of engagement in the international culture wars. The club secretaries wanted an apology, too. “I accept the consequences,” I wrote back. “I am sorry.” By the end of the day, brain tank was dry,
“Well, whatever made you cry earlier today,” Ann said, oblivious to anything I was experiencing, even the dressing-down I had been taking to serve as her advocate, “it will turn out alright. I believe god has something great planned for you, just as I believe I am the richest woman in the world. I am rich in people, in love and in possibility,” she went on. “I am going to get through this now and will come out on top. Maybe I will start my own rescue center. God has lots of riches planned for me — and lots for you, too.” She told me this with a new found confidence I couldn’t bring myself to believe. Probably just the same as my own brother and sister years before.
“Okay, Ann. From your lips to the universe’s ears, right?” I replied a quater heartedly. I was beginning to feel a bit played like a Catholic-guilt church organ, But how could anyone fake the scoliosis and the limps and the seizures and the allergies and everything else, I wondered. And why would anyone bring themselves that low for a spot on a sofa in North London.
“Tomorrow, we must absolutely get you to hospital to get your constipation, your inhalers and your other issues fixed,” I told Ann, thinking that maybe a hospital social worker would finally found this woman a bed. “So up early for that pedicure we missed today and a hair washing.” Ann hadn’t scrubbed clean her dirty head in possibly weeks, as she had complained of hand pain and needed someone to do it for her. I left it all at that, and pet Bromley, by then sitting on my stomach, waiting for attention.
The grave marked with the word "DEAD" in Highgate Cemetery belongs to the British painter and printmaker Patrick Caulfield. He designed the tombstone himself before his death in 2005.
Cats — beings that I had been keeping in my home for nearly 20 years (the first abandoned and bullied stray forced upon me during my first and only stint in rehab in Norwich, Connecticut, whom I took home and aptly named Norwich)— can be totally annoying, too. They meow and wake you when they are hungry. They will bat and hiss if not pleased with your actions. They are picky about toys and catnip and all manner of beds.
Cats also, much like the homeless, get a bad rap. Depending on the moggy and its upbringing, they will either scratch the shit out of you or jump on the couch and nuzzle — or both. They can also sit on your lap and purr to their heart’s content. They are soft and furry and do adorable, outrageous things. Still, there is one major difference from sharing a home with a homeless human and with your two cats: other than various pitches of meows, cats can’t talk. You can also move them or knock them off their perch if necessary; squirt them with water to discipline them; give them a toy to play with; and feed them. Nine times out of 10 they go away happy.
These same things do not apply to homeless people.
After being awakened at god-knows-when by Ann the first night of our stay due to her asthma or allergies or something coming through the cracked window, I knew the second night to close windows and curtains and the doors separating my bedroom area from my living area. And when I awoke at nine o’clock the next morning for coffee with a friend at the British Library , she was dead asleep. Let sleeping homeless people lie, I thought. I came back at noon, and Ann was up and ready to go.
After a productive catch-up with my good friend — also new to London — I felt strong enough to solve both my problems and Ann’s, as well. First up, the pedicure abandoned the day before due to hours at the homeless centre. Second in line: a hair wash. After that, the Whittington hospital A+E an NHS hospital located bwteen the tough Holloway neighbourhood and the posh Highbury enclave. I had hoped we could at leadt get Ann a diuretic, maybe a bed in hospital, a medical social work case manager and some other resources. Ann had already been sending me links to places she wanted to go. Either I was getting royally scammed by Lady Ann, or she knew she needed vast amounts of care, or she just wanted to be waited on hand-and-foot for the rest of her life. I could not discern, and usually I was pretty good a picking up on a scam.
Along the way, political questions started to form in my mind, considering the situation in both the UK and America. After ten years of an austerity government in the UK during which social services were radically slashed for all the marginalised — and all these church leaders including the late pope were trying to encourage compassion — are the lot of us just supposed to throw a bunch of loose change to the people on our streets and kick them off the curb? Are the idiot, naive ones of the population supposed to take them into our homes one-by-one as the tech billionaires and politicians and lobbyists just get richer off the dysfunctional government?
Or if we’re all supposed to be practicing radical self-responsibility as Trust Fund Baby Trump continues to slash and burn any kind of domestic and international aide in favour of war in the Middle East to create even more marginalised, then who the hell is supposed to look out for the people who couldn’t look after themselves? Bono? The birther, Elon Musk? The dwindling charities? Was I supposed to invoice the government for monies spent on the homeless? Which department? Did that department still exist thanks to the absolute insanity of a certain car-and-rocket business buyer (not founder) who drove his employees like indentured servants, while he seeded the world with his offspring and encouraged more people to do so? Maybe I wanted to feel useful after weeks of not writing or pitching or getting anything done on a book due to grief and an existential crisis about the point of my life following my aunt’s funeral. But I also wanted to not feel guilt as I walked down the street and to stop spending my taxed money and my spare time looking after a stranger.
I was having the ultimate karma kick in the ass.
The gave of Jeremy Beadlee, English television and radio presenter, writer and producer, in Highgate Cemetery.
Thanks for reading Letter from a London Pub! This post is public so feel free to share it.
This is not the first iteration of this faux-Tudor pub near Broadway Market, bridging the growing gap between the hipsterness of Hackney and Shorditch. But the Virgin Queen is possibly the most appropos name and setting for the East London local. And it attracts both highbrow and commoners, alike.
Formerly The Albion, a home away from home for West Bromwich Albion fans, the football memorabilia has been replaced by carefully sourced antique panelling and vintage furnishings (such as dark wood panelling recycled from a church), a roaring fire and hand-pumped draughts. But in 2017, Remarkable Pubs — an outfit founded in 1985 when two business men took over the run-down Prince George pub in Hackney — restored its the Albion’s architecture reset its menu and renamed it The Virgin Queen, now the 14th pub in its profile.
Originally built by West's Brewery in the 1920s, the Virgin Queen actually started life as the Duke of Sussex — good thing it’s not that any longer as the sign might feature Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and have tomatoes or other leftovers from the markets thrown at it. (See the Duke of York pub in Fitzrovia.) The open kitchen in the rear room serves delicious daily offerings and classic Sunday roasts, and Wednesday nights, The Virgin Queen hosts possibly the most difficult pub quiz in the city (won by a team pulled together by this author).
A brief request: Journalism is still a very tough business to keep going. If you enjoy this blog, please become a paid subscriber or support me on my Go Fund Me or by buying my art on my website. Every dollar counts.
A piece of street art on the Regents Canal in Islington.
Street Saviour: Ann couldn’t help herself in London. Could I?
Ann
I was late and had a train to catch — a much-needed day excursion to the Seven Sisters National Park on the route to Eastbourne, England. But there she was in front of me, a hunched over, likely Jamaican woman on crutches, dragging three bags and kicking another though Victoria station at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, trying to make it to the toilets. I contemplated and hoped someone would pick up the bag and help. No one did. I couldn’t let it go.
“Would you like some help?” I asked.
“Yes please,” came the reply. So I grabbed her dirty bags, walked her to the toilets and, as I had no cash, gave her my business card. “If you get in a bind, I told her, text my number. I know of a great shelter in North London that could possibly help. I used to volunteer there.” And then I found my friends, made no mention of the incident lest they think this American journalist still relatively new to the UK had “lost the plot” — in English terminology — and took off for a lovely day without a second thought. After all, I had given out my business card to sources, journalism students, other people sleeping rough and all matter of potential networking opportunities. Few had ever used it, let alone a homeless person. The day after I read all the tributes and chest-beating on social media for Pope Francis, who advocated for the poor, the criminal, those on society’s fringes, from people who never done a real day of advocacy in their lives, I had at least walked the talk. Somewhat.
Monday
After a solid walk, rested and refreshed, I awoke ready to take on the journalism industry again, pitch my articles and return to my book writing following an April of misery with the death of my favourite aunt, who succumbed to metastatic cancer, followed by a one-week trip to New York to promote a tennis start-up. I was ready to open my screen for the first time in weeks and feel the clack-clack of keys on my laptop. About three o’clock in the afternoon my phone dinged, however. It was Ann; she was in a real bind — in Bromley, of all places.
It was the last thing I ever expected. Ann would become the first actual test of my piety. Was I up for it? I had rescued a few cats off the streets of Samarkand and most recently, Baghdad — a few scratches on the hands — but all worked out. Ann would prove to be a very complex street cat.
A mural in Camden by the famous Brazilian street artist, Eduardo Kobra.
“Is there nothing in Bromley for you, Ann?” I actually knew someone that way, a woman who ran a cat sanctuary from which I had adopted my latest eponymous moggy, Bromley, in 2022 — my personal best friend and editorial assistant. I dared not call her, however, as I was certain that she would say no and be awful — a theory proven later in the week. The woman would take in hundreds of feral animal, her home and gardens full of every type of stray imaginable, yet I somehow knew she wouldn’t provide shelter for a human being — not even in one of the kitty cottages in her backyard.
“No,” came the reply from Ann. “People are telling me that I smell and that I can’t be crawling up any stairs for health and safety reasons,” she sounded close to tears. “I’m not sure I can take much more of this; and I need to use the loi (sic).” Ann had to use the “loo” — British speak for toilet, ladies’ room, rest room. She wanted to say the highbrow thing in England’s insanely classist society. She just couldn’t spell it.
“Ok, it’s getting late. Can you make it to Islington?” I asked, figuring the answer to be “no way,” especially after I told her I had a small flat, up two flights of stairs and nothing to offer but a couch, a meal, a bath and the friendliness of Bromley and Dorothy, my recently acquired senior cat taken in out of mercy, more than anything. “Fine,” she said. Another surprise. Two hours later at Angel station, there Ann stood in her long puffer coat, pink cap, tired ballet flats with crutches and dirty bags, ready to offer the biggest embrace I had ever received from an English person I knew not at all. I took the hug and grabbed all the bags, and we set off to find her some fish and chips — the only thing she wanted to eat despite her supposed diabetes — in Chapel Market. After she literally crawled backward up my two flights of stairs and set her things on my couch, she ate and watched a few hours of Netflix — teenage dance and gymnastics dramas from Australia (not my genre). I also finally talked her into taking a bath and sorting through her dirty bags, which she eventually did. We did two loads of her laundry, and she reorganized all of her things into fresh tote bags, while I cleaned the ring of dirt Ann had left in my bathtub. She continued to watch her teen drama and play games on her phone, thinking I was having my own shower.
A recent photo of the beginnings of a homeless encampment near Union Square in New York.
At some point, I fessed up to my best friend and business partner. “Okay, I would never do it, but we’re different,” said K, a pricing executive at an international agency. “Hide your jewellery.” I blanched at her remark.
“K, she had to literally crawl up my stairs, I don’t think she is going to make off with anything of mine. And if she did, I could tackle her before you could say Longines.”
“Fair point,” K acknowledged. “Just be safe, please.” I complied. Over the course of the night, information came like drips and drops from a leaky, rusty tap — water I nonetheless knew how to collect after 25 years in the media business. I gave a significantly fresher Ann my bed for the night, not knowing she actually wanted the couch. I told her we would fix her up and find her a place the next day. We said our good nights, and I texted every social worker and homeless advocate I knew, hoping — and actually praying — for a miracle.
Tuesday
I let Ann sleep until midday, until I proposed a pedicure before we hit the only social service agency anyone had sent: The Passage, a homeless charity in Westminster that supposedly dealt with the toughest cases in all of London. I wanted Ann to feel like a human being again, not like a bag of rubbish no one wanted. I knew she would get a completely unnecessary grilling from the tired case worker crunched to get meaningless data to qualify the paltry sums of earmarked money received from private donors and an austerity government. I tried mightily to give her a boost before this happened. Then I sat through the meeting with her, attempting to translate the bits and pieces of data her trauma- or illness-addled brain could manage for the social worker, who remained more stoic and graceful than I had possibly could have managed after eight hours of trying to help hopeless situations such as Ann’s.
A good amount of the indigent and marginalized live in houseboats on the Regents Canal, but Ann couldn’t even have one of those.
As it turned out — and as I likely knew — this was not Ann’s first rodeo with the system of poverty in the UK. She was an excellent cattle-roper so to speak, and definitely fell into the category of “toughest cases” described by The Passage’s website. Ann was what the English call “intentionally homeless,” meaning that she had either fled from, refused to pay for or outright turned down council housing provide by the borough of Camden, one of 32 boroughs — in addition to the City of London — that make up the administrative divisions of Greater London, each with its own town council. If a London borough council finds someone intentionally homeless, it can yank its obligation to provide housing, or pass the buck to another council, or another, or another. I was beginning to understand these complications — a fairly horrific education or what Americans love to call an “ah-ha” moment.
That said, after reading articles and watching various media, including about the shoddy conditions of the Grenfell Tower council housing that caused the fire killing 70 people in 2017, I’m not sure I could blame her. She described places full of mold and infested with spiders, in addition to neighbours writing nasty, racist things on her front door. Ann knew the various patchwork of day centres and domestic violence shelters and churches with free meals that attempted to keep the “rough sleepers” existing for what seemed like posterity to me, at that point. She refused a referral to the Marylebone Project designed to keep women off the streets in the posh Westminster borough, saying that its workers provided only food and chairs and nowhere to sleep, despite its shiny, happy website, which highlighted the smattering of successes. Should they doze off, the women would be rudely awakened, she told the poker-faced, case worker at hour two of the interview. Ann wouldn’t deal with StreetLink, the homeless referral service used by every private shelter in London, either, having evidently been left by two workers in the rain after they discovered her “intentionally homeless” status. Neither I nor the case worker knew whom to trust anymore by then. I just know that I totally understood Ann’s occasional self-harming and desire to commit suicide after I heard the story. I would have.
I, personally, don’t believe in true altruism any longer. We all get something out of helping, whether it’s power, attention, a pat on the back, or a knighthood from King Charles — if anyone in the government notices. Ann gave me a feeling of usefulness or purpose, or just being liked, which I had been seeking since an extended family fight had broken out between me and the rest of my large Midwestern Catholic family over, essentially, a book of our family history started by me because I had felt unseen and unheard for decades.
My objective with Ann — as it always had been — was to find a stop gap between her cheques and her residence, help her on her feet and get her on her way. I also wanted to alleviate the grief, anxiety and an existential crisis about the point of my life following my aunt’s funeral.
A piece of Art Brut at the 2024 exhibition Women in Revolt held at the Tate Britain.
Along the way, political questions started to form in my mind, considering the situation in Great Britain and in America. Following ten years of politicians cutting the heart out of social services for all the marginalised — as church leaders, including the late pope, were trying to encourage compassion for them — are the lot of us just supposed to think that everyone on the street is just putting us all on, faking a scam to make the Roma gangs a ton of money, or that UK’s socialism lite would prevail? Should we all throw a bunch of loose change to the people on our streets and then kick them off the curb? Are the idiot, naive ones of the population supposed to take them in one-by-one and spend our own hard-earned money as the tech billionaires and politicians and lobbyists just get richer off the dysfunctional government? If we’re all supposed to be practicing radical self-responsibility as Trust Fund Baby President Donald Trump across the ocean continues to slash and burn any kind of domestic and international aide in favour of amping up for yet another war in the Middle East to create more destruction, then who the hell is supposed to look out for the people would couldn’t look after themselves? Was I supposed to invoice the government for monies spent on Ann? Which department? If someone did the same in America now, did that department still exist thanks to the absolute insanity of a certain car-and-rocket business buyer (not founder) who drove his employees like indentured servants, while he seeded the world with his offspring and encouraged more people to do so?
It also wasn’t my first tangle with homelessness, either, having been in the system for a few days myself — once a bad substance abuser in New York and Doha, Qatar, where I managed to drink myself out of a good job, been flown back and then be left to my own devices. I spent three frightening nights clutching my possessions while I slept in a shelter in East New York, one of the worst areas of Brooklyn in terms of crime, poverty and hopelessness. As a last resort, family friends from Philadelphia bought me a train ticket and put me on their couch, essentially rescuing me. But those days were hopefully long gone — or so I hoped. I had somehow curbed my love of cheap, light beer, which I could literally drink all day, allowed my family to help in the way they wanted and got sober in 2012 after four years in-and-out of Alcoholics Anonymous, which I loathed with a passion reserved only for the mean girl cliques at my hypocritical Catholic Prep School in Oklahoma — one currently connected to the current Pope Leo XIV. Until the pandemic hit in 2020, which shut down my New York City running club and other networks, I had found solace in a group of people together on a physical mission. We didn’t sit in a chair and moan about our issues; we ran and talked and worked those brain endorphins. But unlike Ann, I also had access to the means to recovery and therefore, my former life as a journalist, as the daughter of two wealthy lawyers from Tulsa, one of the richest enclaves of America thanks to the billionaires that ran the oil and gas industry for 100 years. Ann didn’t. Ann had access to well… not much.
Ann had been born in London, the daughter of two Windrush workers who had taken advantage of the deal offered to Caribbean colonised nations in the 1950s: come to the home country, help our work corps, settle or eventually go back, and we’ll take care of you. While it worked out for some more than others, Ann had nonetheless been brought up well, dancing tap and ballet at one point — or so she told me — and working various jobs, including as an event planner. She even showed me the various books she had written and self-published on Amazon, an array of musings on grief, friendship and her family. Ann was neurodiverse, however, and likely didn’t care for herself well in her early years — something of which I was familiar, having drunk and partied myself into oblivion in my 20s, which was not unusual for a young journalist in New York.
Ann had two disabled brothers in Bermuda, along with aging parents who couldn’t really afford to help her. When their criticism cut, she took a verbal machete to them — an action I also knew well, having developed a knack from my own mother for sending emails that aimed for the head, and heart of a human being. Ann also suffered from chronic depression, something experienced by a significant number of journalists and creatives — and me. But again, she had nothing, whereby my family would always willingly pay for someone to help me with my anger and abandonment issues, usually with a drug and some milquetoast therapy. However, as Ann, literally 364 days my senior, was bouncing around London finding her way, with my wits and my family’s money, after grad school at Columbia University in New York, I put together a moderately successful career, in addition to acquiring a reputation as difficult and a lazy drunk. I wasn’t alone. A 2022 survey by the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma which interviewed almost 1,000 media workers found that 69 percent suffered from anxiety and 46 percent from depression. Since the COVID-19 pandemic and the world’s turmoil, those numbers have only risen. The best way to make it all go away: alcohol, of which I partook heartily, trying to balance a full-time magazine job with freelance writing to make all of my ends meet whilst living in Brooklyn, New York. Cracking open a beer at night was my reward for coming home from work to do more work and prove to my family that I was not the ne’er do well they thought; that I could make it on my own.
All of these thoughts crossed my mind as Ann and I sat behind the desk of Amanda, who just wanted to get through her last appointment of the day. As she tried to coax some sort of housing history out of an Ann. Ann could hardly remember one year of housing history, let alone the last five. Moreover, she outright refused to give out the phone numbers of he ex or any of the friends with whom she had falling outs over this, that or the other.
“But Ann,” I tried to cajole and coax, “this agency will just make a ten-second call to verify you exist. It’s no big deal. And those addresses, just get close to the mark and the staff will do the rest.” The social worker nodded in agreement.
“I would never want anyone giving out my number without my permission and I’m not going to do it. I still have some principles left. I am still human,” she kept reminding us, eyeing the poor girl as if she was a police interrogator and me with disdain for making her endure another round of this.
“Ann, if they’re not going to protect you, why protect them? You have to come first in this situation. These agencies just need the information to meet their own reporting requirements so they can keep receiving money from donors and the government to help people in your circumstances.” Apparently, I was hitting all the right notes as the social worker and I exchanged looks. I took pains to notice something — anything — that would win her over. I saw her white Birkenstocks and matching toenail polish, and told her how stylish it looked, that she was possibly once of the best-dressed social workers I’d seen. I felt sorry for both of them at the desk: one a once open, betrayed but still seemingly optimistic or deluded woman (or just someone that believed the website propaganda) hoping that the system would still come through for her; the other completely skeptical — possibly once idealistic — case manager knowing this appointment was already a failure.
A campaign tribute to then presidential candidate Donald Trump in Iowa. Since that time, President Trump has doubled down on his promise to cut international and domestic aid to help people on the margins.
After Amanda took as much information as she could possibly compile, we were given an email address and told to follow-up. Ann’s alternatives for the night: the Marylebone Project; a privately run shelter in North London, to which I once regularly delivered bread and vegetables, Shelter from the Storm; or my apartment again. I had heard from a friend in the social work community that Chief Executive and Co-Founder,Sheila Scott, could be surly — “difficult” in the King’s English — unbending and unwilling to help, but surely she could provide a place for Ann. I ordered an Uber, and as we drove to Shelter from the Storm, I started saying foxhole Hail Marys, hoping to find Sheila in an accepting mood.
The problem in all of this: I had come to actually like and care for Ann. She could be incredibly child-like and stubborn — a real pain in the ass and particular about her food, medicines, places and triggers. But who in this world isn’t? The night before, as I sat in my chair writing away, I would sometimes look up at this stranger on my sofa watching her badly acted, nonsensical Australian gymnastic shows marvelling at the floor routines and the balance beam acts. Or sometimes I would see her play her little phone games with glee, a grin across her face. Other times, I would notice her texting her friends and family, trying to find for herself a more suitable environment that didn’t involve too much stress. Ann was well aware that she was on the clock at my place; I had no reason to remind her. All the woman wanted was Netflix, a couch, some calm and her games, which she had told me were recommended by a therapist to counter any negative emotions. Why was this so hard to provide for her, I wondered, until I had to coax her myself to drink her laxative and take her inhalers, as if she was my child. Ann likely needed an assisted-living or nursing home.
At Shelter from the Storm, Sheila wasn’t in a magnanimous mood, as I soon discovered upon her opening of the locked door.
“Hi there, do you remember me? I used to deliver vegetables here,” I told her as an introduction.
“Yeah, and why are you here now?” she asked.
I gestured to Ann and told Sheila I had a friend who needed some help, who was slipping through the cracks, who needed a place to stay until she could receive her benefits, who was peaceful and relatively self-contained and who wouldn’t cause any trouble. Would she help?
“I have told all of you lot of volunteers that in no uncertain terms that I would not take your referrals,” she said to me before she slammed the door in my face.
“Wait, please,” I said, before I stopped her. The stress tears started the flow; Ann turned to her phone and her games. “This woman has been through hell and she has nowhere to go but my flat until her next round of benefits. She has been beaten, verbally abused, tossed around by mall security, transit workers, library staff and hospital aides.” At this point, I was down on my knees, a position to which I had not been familiar since my last Catholic mass, some eight or so years prior. “Please help her; I am begging you.”
“No, our insurance won’t allow it.”
“Please, I will be a night volunteer, as I promised before.”
“We don’t need volunteers.” An obvious lie. They needed more volunteers than they could count.
“Please, I will make a donation.”
“We don’t need donations.”
“Please, my god, have some mercy on Ann — I cannot take care of her. She is a nice lady and would be a welcome addition to your household. She is no trouble.” That’s when the dressing down really began.
“How many times do I have to tell you people that a) we are full; and b) we don’t take referrals from volunteers?” She paused and looked at Ann, then looked at me. I thought perhaps she would relent.
“Go through Streetlink or one of the other homeless teams. Then maybe I’ll consider.”
“We have. I have been everywhere. You are our last hope for today.”
“Then I suppose you have no hope.”
At that point, I had no strength left to argue or fight or even call her names — a bit unbelievable for me. I stood up, took Ann by the shoulder and walked away. “Let’s go home, Ann; how about a night of movies and phone games?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t notice the tears. “Sounds perfect,” she replied, and we repeated the previous night’s ritual. How could someone be so cruel, I wondered? How could someone from a country that prides itself on tolerance and etiquette live with themselves after turning away a disabled, homeless woman? I would have an answer soon enough.
Thanks for reading Letter from a London Pub! This post is public so feel free to share it.
The original sign of the Shakespeare’s House in Islington, behind Sadler’s Wells.
The outside of the Shakespeare’s Head pub in Islington. To more traditionalists, a “local” — aka a local pub — looks a bit more Victorian, especially for this area of Central London.
Another angle of the Shakespeare’s pub in Islington, Central London. The pub is located behind Sadler’s Wells, one of the premier ballet companies in England.
The words have slowed to a trickle these days. Like a tap that is clogged with debris — nothing seems to want trickle out If an editor put a gun to my head now and said “I want 3,000 words on your favorite story that you have been pitching for five years,” I’m not sure I could even pull it out of me.
But first, the pub of the month. The Shakespeare Head isn’t Victorian or ornate or plate-glass beautiful or really unique, except — and this is what I love about it — it doesn’t try to be. It doesn’t have any compunction about being in a trendy neighborhood or trying to attract the smart set, as the hipsters were once called. The quintessential boozer from the 1960s, the Shakespeare’s Head doesn’t need to have a “Karl Mark Drank Here” reputation or a fancy mixologist — the bartender is about 75, bald and takes his sweet time serving customers — but because of the pub’s unconcerned attitude, no one bothers. They can see you and you can wait. Plus, absolutely nothing beats that faux-sailing theme — replete with anchors and buoys — that is rarely found, especially outside seaside towns — these days. While the 1970s-dentists-office archaeological -vibe may send customers in the other direction, don’t fret: the tenders of these salt-of-the-earth local extend a warm welcome to all — even the bald guy who takes 10 minutes to find your crisps.
A cartoon from the Times of London showing Trump traipsing through the remains of Gaza before he builds the proposed Trump Gaza.
Trump + My Broken Promise
Back in the old journalism school, we had a bushy haired, wooly eyebrowed professor named Sandy Padwe who was a sports-turned-investigative journalist when, in the mid-1980s, he exposed the Pete Rose betting scandal. On certain days, post-9-11-2001, he would look toward South Manhattan where the remains of the World Trade Center continued to smoke, and say something to the effect of “just you wait, all the asbestos in those buildings and the workers exposed to it, is going to cause massive illiness.”
Padwe, as we called him, was right. To date, more people have now died from the toxic exposure of the World Trade Center than in the 9/11 attacks: 4,343 survivors and first responders. It's not that Padwe enjoyed wagging the finger — although, let’s just admit it, a lot of us journalists quite enjoy a little “I told you so.” Rather, Padwe wanted to point one of us aspiring writers to a story that would not only expose a wrong, but also possibly prevent some terrible things from happening.
Last summer I pulled a Padwe. I returned from the States and penned a 10,000-word cautionary tale on my ten days spent in Iowa (a mostly steady Trump state) and all the troubles that particular state as a microcosm of the rest of the country, could face. I am not sure how many people read it, or even if old Padwe had a look. Doubtful. I wrote my story, brushed my hands and said that was the end of my Trump writing for this term.
A brief request: Journalism is still a very tough business to keep going. If you enjoy this blog, please become a paid subscriber or support my art on my Etsy site VntgBritishCreations. Every dollar counts..
One of the martyrdom signs in Baghdad, Iraq in February 2025
But about three weeks ago, Columbia Journalism School held an off-the-record meeting with its students to discuess matters of free speech. The message that night seemingly came down to, in essence, “do what you feel like you need to do, but no one can protect you, these are dangerous times.” The following day, a reporter from the New York Times reached out to verify the comment from Dean Jelani Cobb. Cobb did say it — supposedly out of context — but here it is, verbatim:
“I responded that those words were technically accurate but practically misleading... I went on to say that I would do everything in my power to defend our journalists and their right to report but that none of us had the capacity to stop DHS from jeopardizing their safety….”
I have so far done my best to ignore freedoms stripped away one-by-one, the enormous U.S. tariff trade war, federal employees’s forced resignations, immigrants on deportation flights to nefarious countries known for human rights abuses, the Trump/Gaza plan, the business dealings over Ukraine’s war, and everything that would have had the U.S. President thrown out of office faster than an Southern-American can say “Nixon/Agnew.” I haven’t written a social media post, a blog, an article, a comment or much of anything about the situation. In fact, my European and English friends and I generally avoid the topicor Trump altogether.
Ayatollah Ali Khameneii, Iran's supreme leader and one of the most consequential figures in the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
Despite these policies and these “protective” speeches given at my own alma mater — talks that raise the personal fury metter arrow — instead of turning toward journalism, I seem to be just turning away. Quite possibly my recent trip to Baghdad took away my focus, or the recent death of my favorite aunt, who was raised in 1950s cancer-chemical soaked Iowa, from metastatic cancer have made my words feel futile.
Depression is one of those things that goes hand-in-hand with creativity: the writer’s melancholy, right? Mine can get to the hide-under-the-covers and not want to leave my apartment stage, if I let it go for a while. But it generally starts as a mild irritation, followed by sulleness and withdrawal. The anger then hits: it can be ugly, rude, combative — my depression makes me wants someone to feel some pain if they fuck with me or something I care about. Sometimes, that is productive — or motivating, at least. I have done many stories in which anger at systems, policies and injustice have gained me a raised Padwe eyebrow (see above) of approval.
I guess it wouldn’t be the first time a personal depression segued into a national — or now, international malaise — for me, but the older I become, the more difficult it is for me to spill words over these matters. Twenty years ago, I stood in the bone-chilling cold winter of 2003 writing about ani-war protests, believing that my reporting on a group of vocal, active people could help stop a war. After the U.S. started a predictably disastrous 20-year bloodshed and throughout many visits to the refugee-laden Middle East, in addition to watching the ascendancy and escalation of, literally, thousands of voices (isn’t Substack supposed to be a platform for all those people who don’t have agents or major magazine-and-book deals, btw?), I have begun a gradual descent into feeling that my informative essay, or my blog or my scream or sob is just one more into a deeper well of increasing width. If I allow it, I feel as if it could swallow me entirely
A poster of three of the four martyrs on an overpass in Baghdad.
I don’t want to turn away from Professor Padwe and the thing that has felt like my calling since I was age five. That said, I have learned that I cannot pitch from the ground in Iraq or Uzbekistan or wherever I am and expect editors in New York or London in thier high-rises and expect them to necessarily care. They don’t see a story the way I experience it, and besides, they need to sell magazines, with celebrity narratives, photo shoots of designer goods, the enjoyment of life — bringing us all from our increasingly repressive existence into one to which we supposedly dream.
To that end, instead of just writing stories, I have decided to choose a few causes about which I care, write about them (if it happens) and then actually do something, whether it’s organise a group of animal professionals into the Iraqi Street Animal Rescue Organizationto help rescue dogs and cats off the streets of Iraq or try to find equipment for the Iraqi Foundation for Sport + Development to help kids get out of the camps and find a future for themselves.
In the end, Sandy Padwe’s shrugs and finger wags weren’t journalism calls to arms or gifts of stories to inquisitive minds. They were appeals to do something about the situations we face on a daily basis. They were predictions about the future if we didn’t act. So far, I believe we are now getting to a collective state of under-the-bedclothes denial; we all need to do Padwes in whatever forms those may take.
Another poster of the four martyrs in Baghdad, including the deceased leaders of the Al-Qud Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Yahyah Snwar of Hamas and assan Nazrallah of Hezbollah.
Letter from a London Pub is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber or visit my Etsy site VntgBritishCreations. Every dollar counts.
John Myatt and his patron, John Drewe, usually met at Kings Cross to exchange fake paintings sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, but maybe this nearby pub would have suited them better.
Dubbed the ideal place for a pre-show point, the Harlequin Pub has long been a fixer of Clerkenwell, behind the Sadler’s Wells theatre. Opened in 1848 by resident John Grey and listed as a “beer shop,” The Harlequin, as it soon became known, served the other terrace houses built 20 years earlier, which had also hosted bakers, lithographers and printers, gem-cutters and ivory workers — located close to London’s Diamond District, otherwise known as Hatton Garden.
The pub’s name reflects the 19th-century heyday of early English pantomime when the great comic actor Joseph Grimaldi was the star performer at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Grimaldi — the most popular English entertainer of the Regency era who expanded the role of clown into “harlequinade” and added the popular whiteface makeup still used today — died before the pub opened, but his farewell to clowning speech remains framed inside The Harlequin. A more recent and notorious resident of The Harlequin was Brian Reader, mastermind of the infamous Hatton Garden hole in the wall gang who lived upstairs with the landlady. The pilastered front, that still survives today, dates from 1894 and replaced the bowed glazed shopfront originally common to all the houses in the terrace.
The Harlequin remains a Free House — just as it started — meaning it has not pledged allegiance to any of the many breweries in the area, such as Green King, Young + Company, and Fuller, Smith & Turner.
A brief request: Journalism is still a very tough business to keep going. If you enjoy this blog, please become a paid subscriber or support my art on my Etsy site VntgBritishCreations. Every dollar counts.
The one-time forger and now famous imitator. John Myatt, with one of this paintings done in the same manor as Vincent Van Gogh. After becoming renowned for his story through a nonfiction book, a movie about his life is now in the works.
The genuine faker John Myatt
He once painted fakes to trick art galleries; now he paints them for wealthy customers
John Myatt held his breath as the bidding began in the Christie’s auction room. His drawings were selling, one by one. He had dreamed of having his work on the block since the beginning of his career. He felt a tingle of adrenaline as the paddles went up… and victory as he strolled through the city streets with a wad of money in his back pocket afterward. But the feeling didn’t last long. Eventually, Myatt started to feel empty and disappointed.
The psychic void grew as the prices that his agent, John Drewe, sought for his work went up and up. An undertaking that had begun with a straightforward 1987 magazine advertisement for “genuine fakes from £150” had grown into an elaborate, and highly remunerative, scam involving forgeries attributed to Matisse, Chagall, Ben Nicholson and more.
According to investigative journalist David Pallister, who wrote about the Myatt case for the Guardian, many psychologists and profilers classify forgers as a “peculiar breed” whose motive is not only money but recognition. “Technically adept, often with formal training and a keen sense of color and form, they have produced work, down to the singular brushstroke or cut of the clay, that rivals the originals.
Automat, 1927' In The Style of Edward Hopper, 2021. by John Myatt. Includes a Certificate of Authenticity, $2,233, from the Castle Gallery.
“But, by definition, they have not found their own voice; they are unable to put their name to pieces of modest integrity and flair when they know that they are capable of simulating the greats. Lacking the prerequisite metropolitan social connections, they find the international art market — the galleries and auction houses of New York, London and Paris — intimidating, haughty and false… so beating the market is a challenge and a game: fraught with danger but ultimately exhilarating.”
John Myatt defied that profile. After the Christie’s auction, he told Drewe, equally accomplished at forgery — in his case of provenance and sale documents to back up the fraud — that he wanted to quit. Myatt had hit a fallow period; he tinkered with a fake of a Giacometti “Standing Nude” for weeks, unable to get the stance correct. He worried about being discovered by the people in his Staffordshire village, especially his church. So when he was busted in 1995, he didn’t run, he didn’t call a lawyer, and he didn’t deny his culpability. He simply got in the car with the Scotland Yard detectives, ready to comply. At that moment, Myatt, who turned Queen’s Evidence, promised to end his life’s work and never to paint again.
“I would not do [the fraud] again that I did when I was forty-nine,” Myatt, then sixty-nine, told the Independent in 2014. (Myatt and his wife, Rosemary, declined to comment for this piece.) “Back then I was at a particular point in life, with particular circumstances. In any other circumstances I think I would have found Drewe particularly off-putting rather than compelling. The worst part was that I’d given up the crime eighteen months before they caught me.”
Before The Splash In The Style Of David Hockney, 2016 by John Myatt.
Myatt believed that his forgery jig was well and truly up. But even before his and Drewe’s jail sentences began, Myatt received a request: Would he paint the family of detective sergeant Jonathan Searle, the man who’d busted him? Myatt earned £5,000. Next customers: his team of barristers, one by one, followed by more detectives of the Scotland Yard Art and Antiques Unit. Soon, Myatt had enough work to carry him through the end of 1999 and net him £18,000. “A detective said to me there’s an awful lot of police people, barristers and lawyers who were involved in this case who would love a memento,” Myatt has said.
Since then, his infamy as one of the world’s most prolific forgers has brought Myatt fame, fortune, renown and even respect. Just after his release from Brixton Prison, where he served four months of a year-long sentence, he started his own company, Genuine Fakes, which reproduces works he imagines might come from such artists as Edward Hopper and Picasso (sometimes including a cameo from Myatt’s dog Henry) and sells them for £700 and up.
In 2009, journalists Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo published Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art— a finalist for the Edgar Award for the best in mystery writing. And the UK independent company Green Eye Productions has produced Genuine Fakes, a biopic based on Myatt’s life, with Sir Derek Jacobi and Alex Kingston.
Genuine Fake in the Style of Roy Lichtenstein, by John Myatt.
Myatt’s lucrative work as a forgery expert for the London Metropolitan Police also continues. It’s necessary: an art-world insider estimates that 10 percent of works in art museums are fakes, and the former director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas Hoving, once estimated that 40 percent of artworks on the market are forgeries. But what separates Myatt from Old Masters forger Eric Hebborn, whose memoir Drawn to Trouble came out during Myatt’s scheme, or Han van Meegeren, a connoisseur of the Dutch Golden Age who sold a counterfeited painting to Nazi Hermann Göring?
The old Myatt, the self-deriding artist of the mid-Nineties, might have said “nothing.” The thriving Myatt might say that his were never copies, but interpretations of an artist’s work. “When I paint in the style of one of the greats… Monet, Picasso, Van Gogh… I am not simply creating a copy or pale imitation of the original. Just as an actor immerses himself into a character,” Myatt has said, “I climb into the minds and lives of each artist. I adopt their techniques and search for the inspiration behind each great artist’s view of the world. Then, and only then, do I start to paint a ‘Legitimate Fake.’”
But any reader of Salisbury and Sujo’s book can tell it was Myatt’s desperation that brought him to Drewe, the master grifter. Myatt was the son of a farmer, an art school grad, failed songwriter and divorced father of two trying to support his children on the salary of a local art instructor.
Marilyn After Andy Warhol, 2022, by John Myatt. includes a Certificate of Authenticity, $17,500, from the Castle Gallery.
Having shown some originality and talent as a student, Myatt painted mostly country landscapes, which didn’t exactly take off in the burgeoning London art scene of David Hockney and Damien Hirst. So Myatt placed that ad in the satirical monthly Private Eye, soliciting customers for his “genuine fakes” of nineteenth- and twentieth-century paintings for £150, having once confected a Raoul Dufy for a friend who had admired the real thing in the home of a Marks and Spencer executive.
The ad brought a trickle of commissions and, for better or worse, delivered Dr. John Drewe. Drewe, a secondary-school dropout from Sussex whose real name was John Cockett, passed himself off as a renowned physicist and well-connected connoisseur. He wanted “a nice Matisse.”
At a drop-off spot in London’s Euston station, Myatt delivered the fake Matisse and took an order for more paintings, such as “another early twentieth-century work, this one in the style of… Paul Klee.” Drewe ingratiated himself with players in the London art scene, at the same time delving into museum archives to create provenances from artists like Georges Braque and Roger Bissière. He would ultimately use these to convince gallerists and auction houses to buy Myatt’s forgeries.
Women of Algiers, 2024, by John Myatt in the style of Pablo Picasso, includes a Certificate of Authenticity, $2,030 from the Castle Gallery.
Drewe and Myatt’s ultimate downfall came from an unexpected source. Myatt had never wanted a Bentley like Drewe’s or a big house in Golders Green. He wanted to provide for his children and had been man- aging that well enough, according to Salisbury and Sujo, producing more than 200 paintings over ten years, which sold around the world for a total of about £2 million, netting Myatt about £275,000.
It still wasn’t enough for Drewe. In 1993, he left his Israeli partner, Batsheva Goudsmid, a former member of the Mossad. Goudsmid took her suspicions and a briefcase full of Drewe’s forgery kit to the police.
While the relieved Myatt cooperated, Drewe represented himself and was sentenced to six years in prison, serving two. (Drewe, who has since been convicted of at least one additional fraud, refused comment for this article.)
'Gas, 1940' In The Style of Edward Hopper, 2021, by John Myatt, includes a Certificate of Authenticity, $2,233 from the Castle Gallery.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the art market was booming with no fewer than 550,000 fine art lots sold via auctions throughout the world, generating a total of $13.3 billion. That’s the highest ever-recorded number of fine-art auction lots sold in one year, according to a fine art publication. Boosted by confidence in online sales after two years of limited travel, private sales at auction house like Christie’s and Phillips increased dramatically; mid-market sales, as well as resales, flourished, and buyers were optimistic about new material and expanding their collecting areas.
A booming market of any sort opens new possibilities: “It is normal in all walks of life to have fakers and scammers — [the fakers] were just part of the system,” says Peter Nahum, an English art dealer who once did business with Myatt and Drewe. Although Nahum says, “I don’t like fakers and don’t like anyone making a living from them either,” he concedes that “in the future these works will probably be sold as genuine and so the whole cycle starts again.”
In an improved economy, Nahum believes the forgery market will also improve. “They get rid of some of the (fraud) gangs and others take their place. There might be as much as 50 percent of works that are either fakes or miscatalogued. It is the expert’s job to expose and avoid all of them.”
Nahum may be right. Myatt is seemingly everywhere selling his fakes: Sky’s Fame in the Frame — a special in which Myatt painted six celebrity sitters into a famous painting — as well as Virgin Virtuosos, several exhibitions around England, including both fakes and original work and now the movie. Does it bother him that more people still want the fakes? “That’s the nature of the beast, and there’s no escape,” Myatt said. “Many fakers have no voice of their own at all. I have paintings I want to paint. I’m not sitting there with painter’s block.”
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2025 World edition.
The forger-turned-legitimate faker, John Myatt, in his studio in Staffordshire, circa 2011. A film about his life is currently in the works.
Thanks for reading Letter from a London Pub! This post is public so feel free to share it or subscribe!
