YORKSHIRE GREY

YORKSHIRE GREY - A LITERARY LONDON PUB

On Wednesday 11 November 2024, The Society of Authors (SOA) held a ‘SOA Lates’ get-together at 24 Bedford Row, WCI. En route, I popped into the Yorkshire Grey for a swift half. A Stonegate tenanted pub run by the First Restaurant Group.

The Yorkshire Grey has stood on the corner with Gray’s Inn Road since 1676. The current four-storey Grade II listed building is from 1877. There is an elaborate pale brick and stucco exterior. Above the angled entrance bay is bas relief of a mounted soldier in Yorkshire Gray uniform, with his sword drawn sword, carved by Mr Plows in 1878. Directly overhead at the door is a sculptured horse's head (Yorkshire Grey).

On Wednesday evening, I entered at 5.45pm and saw pictures of dogs in formal wear on the walls, Christmas decorations and Christmas tree up, a fake fire blazing on the big Screen TV and a lot of people.

As it was rammed, I asked a barman, ‘Is there a party going on?’ He pointed towards the bar, with mulled wine heater sitting on the top, ‘Yes, but the bar is open ...’ As I ordered a half of Amstel (￡3.25), the punter beside me said, ‘It’s a bit hot in here.’

I took my drink and sat in the only chair available, near a table fully set for dinner (plus crackers). At the table, a woman in a blue jumper (covered in snowmen and red-and-white sugar canes) handed out Christmas cards to her work colleagues.

Standing, with another set of colleagues at their work's party, was a second woman wearing a second Xmas jumper (this time depicting two penguins, in Santa Claus hats, plus a large tinsel heart between the two of them).

A large room is available for hire upstairs. Lots of readings and launches have taken place at the pub such as:

* In 2009, New Scientist presented the American sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson.

* Alma Books presented Bookstock in 2011.

* A memorial for Norman Geras the author of Normblog took place in 2013.

* Seren Books?have held a book launch event for Judy Brown’s poetry collection Crowd Sensations: A Novel out of Time (2016) and David Foster Morgan’s Masculine Happiness (2015). Seren Books?also held a London launch for Katrina Naomi’s poetry collection The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (2016).

* Shortlist’s Beer & Book Club, in association with Faber & Faber, included Leo Benedictus talking about his book Consent (2018)

The pub has been associated with London’s underworld. True crime literary references include:

* From Brian Mcdonald‘s book Gangs of London: 100 Years of Mob Warfare (2010): This was followed by a visit to the?Yorkshire Grey?in?Theobalds?Road, a prime seat of the White family. Harry White, who had taken over the reins from his tougher father Alf and was reeling from attacks by Jack Spot's gang, fled to his business premises in Farringdon Road?...

* From Frank Fraser & James Morton’s book Mad Frank's Underworld History of Britain (2012): If you go down?Theobalds?Road towards the City, at the corner of Gray's Inn Road there's the pub, the?Yorkshire Grey. That used to be the hangout for Darby Sabini and the Italians of the 1920s. There was a big shooting there when the Sabinis were?fighting it out with the Brummagen Boys and fred Gilbert’s Camden Town Mob over who controlled the racecourses.

* From Raphael Samuel’s East End Underworld (1981): Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding (2016): Somebody asked me for help and we went up the ‘Yorkshire Grey?' in?Theobalds?Road to sort it out. I was a married man by then, but I still had a name. Dodger Mullins, one of the biggest terrors in London at the time, roped me in.

The pub is also mentioned in the introduction to Leslie Charteris’s book of mystery short stories Trust the Saint (2014): Yes, I’d had a couple of pints with my work colleagues in the Yorkshire Grey?pub on the corner of?Theobalds?Road and Grays Inn and I was now heading home. I started to cross the road just as the lights were changing and broke into a run about half way across the far lane. At that precise moment?it felt rather like someone must’ve very accurately thrown a cricket ball at my leg ... I put off a trip to the hospital until the following day where I was diagnosed with a snapped calf muscle ... But neither you nor I have to wait for a nasty leg injury. Get all the Saint books. Read them. If you want to be entertained, always, always trust the Saint.

Yorkshire Grey, 2 Theobalds Road, Holborn WC1X 8PN

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