DUKE OF YORK

?DUKE OF YORK - A LITERARY LONDON PUB

The pub, situated the top end of Rathbone Street, was first licensed in 1767 and rebuilt in 1897. The Newman Arms is (50m) down the street at number 23.

On Friday at 2pm, eight people were drinking/chatting and smoking/vaping out the front. Inside it was moderately busy around the U-shaped bar counter and tables. GB News was being shown on the TV, lots of villains on there, at least the sound was off. Two groups of office workers and a couple sat in the upstairs room; all the workers left the pub promptly after finishing their (liquid) lunches.

If you want to write a ‘bad character’ in your story this is a good place to come for inspiration.

First up, this is no Pizza Express, Woking! However, yes, the pub sign does show an image of the current Duke of York (Prince Andrew) on it, in a mock-heroic pose. It will be interesting to see how long that remains on display? Apparently, the pub has been colloquially named ‘The Nonce’.

In the 1940s and 50s, so-called razor gangs sometimes came to the pub.

In 1942, Anthony Burgess and his wife Lynne witnessed a gang invade this pub; it has been postulated that the violence inspired A Clockwork Orange, but Burgess must have taken inspiration from many sources. If you come to the Duke of York, you can imagine Alex, the cherubically fair leader, with a razor gang of gorillas, or droogs, backing him up.

In Larry Harrison’s Glimpses of a Floating World (2009) the character Ronnie heads for the Duke of York ‘a haunt of Beats, buskers and pavement artists.’ (page 68)

For the Australian-born novelist Randolph Stow he remembered: ‘Whenever I drank at the Duke of York … I was frisked for drugs by the police at the exit.’

John and I sat on red upholstered seating drinking Pravha and talking about villains (among other things). Anti-heroes, baddies and rogues come in all shapes and sizes but to name a few common traits they may be: immoral, selfish, greedy, insecure, manipulative and/or violent. LitHub suggest these 40 bad ‘uns! I like in John’s novel ‘The Lost Seven Days of Young Victoria’ there is a blackguard called ‘Colonel Fairman’ who struts around like a cockerel!

Duke of York, 47 Rathbone Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 1NW

Wikipedia The Duke of York

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If you liked this article,?there are other London literary pubs listed here.