The Old Dog and Duck: The Secret Meanings of Pub Names

Author(s): Albert Jack

Gift/Humour

This is a book for everyone who has ever wondered why pubs should be called The Cross Keys, The Dew Drop Inn or The Hope and Anchor. You'll be glad to know that there are very good - strange and memorable - reasons behind them all. After much research about (and in) pubs, Albert Jack brings together the stories behind pub names to reveal how they offer fascinating and subversive insights on our history, customs, attitudes and jokes in just the same way that nursery rhymes do. The Royal Oak, for instance, commemorates the tree that hid Charles II from Cromwell's forces after his defeat at Worcester; The Bag of Nails is a corruption of the Bacchanals, the crazed followers of Bacchus, the god of wine and drunkenness; The Cat and the Fiddle a mangling of Catherine La Fidele and a guarded gesture of support for Henry VIII's first, Catholic, wife Catherine of Aragon; plus many, many more. Here too are even more facts about everything from ghosts to drinking songs to the rules of cribbage and shove ha'penny, showing that, ultimately, the story of pub history is really the story of our own popular history.

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Product Information

'Lively and intriguing . . . a testament to the nature of the pub as a focus for creativity, wit and yarn-spinning' - THE TIMES 'An entertaining book full of stories . . . worth taking down the pub' - METRO

Albert Jack has written a series of bestselling books that explore the strange stories behind things we take for granted: that's everything from nursery rhymes - Pop Goes the Weasel - to everyday phrases - Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep. When not engaged in research, he lives somewhere between Guildford and Cape Town, where he divides his time between fast living and slow horses, neat vodka and untidy pubs. This is the book he has always wanted to write.

General Fields

  • : 9780141043432
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : Penguin Books Ltd
  • : 0.225
  • : September 2011
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 17mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : November 2011
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Albert Jack
  • : Paperback
  • : 112
  • : 647.9541
  • : 304
  • : 30