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Sad news from the Campaign for Real Ale, which says that more and more young people are drinking at home rather than down the pub. ‘Pre-loading’ at home before clubbing has seen the number of 18- to 24-year-olds going to the pub at least once a week fall from 38 per cent to a measly 16 per cent, over the last seven years. Eight thousand pubs have closed during this period. Time for some drastic measures and instructive reading.

Camra should provide youths with literary inspiration. Surely, after encountering some of literature’s glorious pubs, with their jolly and eccentric regulars, no reader will be able to resist the charm of their local.

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Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

Authors have been honouring fine drinking establishments with a place in their fiction for centuries — from Chaucer to Dickens, Shakespeare to Graham Swift, P.G.