A. P. Herbert's London pubs
A. P. Herbert, 1890 to 1971 · Every pub on this page was open and serving when we last checked (August 2026)
Herbert was a Hammersmith man, an MP, a campaigner for sensible licensing laws, and a regular at The Dove on Upper Mall. When he wrote The Water Gipsies, his 1930 novel of life on the Thames barges, he put his local in it under the thinnest of disguises: The Pigeons.
The book made the pub a landmark, and the river still runs past the terrace exactly as it did for his barge families.
The Water Gipsies (1930)
The Water Gipsies is still in copyright, so no quotation here: read it and you'll recognise The Pigeons within a page. The novel follows two sisters living on a Thames barge, and the pub is their shore.
The Dove
Hammersmith riverside · 19 Upper Mall, W6 9TA
A 17th-century riverside pub on the Thames at Hammersmith, renamed The Pigeons in the novel. Herbert's use of his own local made it famous, and it claims one of the smallest bar rooms in Britain.
The terrace looks straight across the river. Arrive outside peak hours or expect to hover for a seat.
More authors, more pubs
- Charles Dickens (Four pubs across four novels, from a galleried Southwark coaching inn to a narrow riverside tavern in Limehouse.)
- Bram Stoker (One pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath, caught up in the hunt for a vampire in Dracula.)
- Arthur Conan Doyle (One Bloomsbury pub opposite the British Museum, disguised as the Alpha Inn in a Sherlock Holmes case.)
- George Orwell (One tiny Fitzrovia pub that served as the prole pub in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and turned up in Keep the Aspidistra Flying first.)
- Graham Greene (One Clapham Common pub, disguised as the Pontefract Arms in The End of the Affair.)
- Samuel Pepys (One Bankside tavern, by tradition the alehouse where Pepys watched the Great Fire consume London.)
If any of these pubs surprises you at the card machine, file a report. If they get it right, nominate them for the Hall of Saints.