Last orders | 27 August 2015

Lant Street would be easy to miss, if you weren’t looking for it. Charles Dickens lodged on Lant Street as a child, during his father’s stay in Marshalsea debtors’ prison nearby. The Gladstone Arms is about halfway down, doors open to the narrow street on a warm afternoon in August.

Inside, an old man nurses a pint in late summer light that falls through mullioned windows. The grain of the oak floors has a dark patina of London grime. There is nothing spiffed-up about the place. But it’s beautiful, and in decent nick. A black and white cat sits on the piano.

This tiny place is also a live music venue, and even has an in-house label for bands that play there regularly. CDs are for sale at the bar. The Gladstone also sells Pieminister pies, from a company based in Bristol. From about 7 p.m., even on a Monday in August, it starts filling with young ‘creatives’ and innovators: a demographic contemporary politicians wax lyrical about.