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Showing Tag: "pub" (Show all posts)

Shane MacGowan - a personal tribute

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, November 30, 2023, In : Bohemian Britain 


Our writer, Nick Hennegan 
had the pleasure of meeting the Pogues frontman, Shane MacGowan - punk, traditionalist and perceived hell-raiser - who has passed away. They met in Soho, London. This is Nick's personal tribute on Bohemian Britain. Join us every Saturday on the Literary Pub Crawl at 5pm for a 'Rainy Night In Soho' and a 'Fairytale of New York... sorry... Soho!'

www.BohemianBritain.com



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Pint Night in Soho!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, March 23, 2023,

The French House Pub famously only serves half-pints. Apart from on Pint Night! When, for charity and for one day only, they serve pints like other pubs.

Traditionally, there’s a lot of things happen on pints day at The French. And usually the musician Suggs, from the band Madness, pours the 1st pint in the morning. (His Mom used to be a regular)

As you may gather from watching this little video, I started uploading live to Facebook etc but now just do them here. And the video was filmed towa...


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The Shark Is Broken - Theatre Review

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, October 28, 2021, In : Bohemian Britain 
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the theatre... oh, sorry... that should be water. Jaws analogies abound with the lovely little production that was postponed when Covid hit. Now they're back! See what our writer, Nick Hennegan thought about it on BohemianBritain.com


The Cast of The Shark Is Broken

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The Edinburgh Festivals 2021 - new blog

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Monday, August 9, 2021, In : Travelers Tips 
Writer Nick Hennegan is at the Edinburgh Fringe this year, just for a week - a different experience after the last few, full-on years. Follow him on our new website -  Bohemian Britain




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The End of Edinburgh...

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Tuesday, November 27, 2018, In : Nick Hennegan 

For a writer, I've not been writing on here very much!  Mainly due to the creative madness that is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  I actually had THREE productions I’d written and directed at the festival this year - A Christmas Carol, Henry V - Lion of England and Hamlet - Horatio’s Tale.  Yes, it was a hectic, but a glorious and intense experience.  Adapting Shakespeare’s Hamlet almost sent me as mad as the gloomy Dane himself. (Or was he mad? Or gloomy?  Or just pretending.  How mad ...


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Don't understand Shakespeare? You need Dylan Thomas Day!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Wednesday, May 3, 2017, In : Nick Hennegan 


Dylan Day - a celebration of the work of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas - is a great idea for a number of reasons.  Firstly it's always a good idea to celebrate art and literature.  In a world full of Trump, May, Brexit, Syria and conflict, it's a very good idea to remind ourselves of the real reason we are all really here.  For the sweet, satisfied moments of family, friendship, kindness, vision and imagination.  I can’t remember who said a civilised society is only measured by the success of it...


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The real Dylan Thomas?

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Sunday, January 29, 2017, In : Writers 

It’s been great being involved with the new International Dylan Day. 14 May each year has been designated Dylan Day to mark the first time his play for voices ‘Under Milk Wood’ was performed in public in the USA. It’s a direct lift from Blooms Day, an annual event inspired by one of the lead characters in Ulysses, by James Joyce. We're going to celebrate it this year with an extra tour and extra Dylan content.  Book now for 13th May - the Saturday before the day.  We also have some id...


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Why Bob Dylan deserves his Nobel prize in literature

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Saturday, October 29, 2016, In : Writers 

We were all a bit surprised when Bob Dylan was awarded his Nobel prize for literature.  Our Charles Dickens Christmas Crawl stops at the very pub where Bob Dylan gave his first ever public performance outside the USA!  This is what Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature at the University of Leeds thought about it.




To the surprise of many, Bob Dylan has become the first singer-songwriter to win the Nobel prize in literature.


As the news broke, I was in the middle of teaching James Joyce to s...


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Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. in Birmingham!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, December 11, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 

It's exciting being back in Birmingham at the Old Joint Stock Pub and Theatre. And last years London sellout version of my A Christmas Carol has done just that again - this time in Birmingham. Here's what I wrote for the theatre programme. 



We all know Charles Dickens' remarkable Christmas story. He wrote it in 1843, just as his fame and success as a writer was fading. The novella has not been out of print since! I first came across the book as a boy. I borrowed a children's version of the sto...


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We've moved! The Fitzroy Tavern closes!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, July 17, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 
The roots of the Literary Pub Crawl lie in the Fitzroy Tavern. I was doing my Masters at the University of London and looking for a cheap pint.  My mate from Birmingham, filmmaker Andy Bloom, suggested I could get a cheaper pint at the Fitzroy, as the pub was run by the Sam Smiths Brewery and they were considerably cheaper than other pubs in the area.  He also told me about the Writers and Artists Bar at the pub, which certainly appealed.

So I was nursing my cheap pint downstairs and couldn't ...
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We missed you!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, May 15, 2015, In : Theatre News 


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Review of 2014.

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Monday, January 12, 2015, In : Nick Hennegan 

We started 2014 in the shadow of the previous year.

My experiment with theatre in a pub, as opposed to Pub Theatre as it's understood in London, had proved very successful in 2013.  I managed to get the rights to produce Under Milk Wood on the 60th anniversary of Dylan Thomas' death.  It proved a success in a number of ways, but mainly though conversations with the excellent veteran theatre director John Adams.  John was not available to direct, but he recommended a former student of his who ...


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Dylan, my Dylan.

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Saturday, November 8, 2014, In : Nick Hennegan 

 
So the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia Festival is now over.  Although only really on the periphery of the organisation it's been a part of my life and certainly large in my thoughts for most of this year.  
Pub crawl walks were part of Griff Rhys Jones' original thinking for the festival which he conceived with Dylan's granddaughter, Hannah Ellis and actor Jason Morrell.  It became far more than a tour of Dylan Thomas' Fitzrovia Pubs of course. And I have to say the final, fantastic Gala Performa...

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Maverick's Summer Newsletter - Our First E-Book!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Friday, August 22, 2014, In : Nick Hennegan 

(I know... Maddie says a newsletter a month and the last one was June. But I've been busy. And now we have Katie. More about her next time!)


Norman The Brummie, Fox Hunting in Kingstanding and Lest We Forget.


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What a great summer it's been so far! Although Hyde Park was starting to resemble Australia. The grass had turned yellow and parched. But we're loving the hot weather. And we know it ain't gonna last.  

100 years ago it was also an unusua
l summer. We declared war on...


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Under Milk Wood - The final, raw, blog. We did it!

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, In : Nick Hennegan 
Or at least the final blog of this particular production. What can I say! We’ve just finished and I’ve just got back from the last night.  And the consumption of a few drinks with the cast makes this not the best time to write this, perhaps! But it became a big deal for me. As you may have gathered from the previous blogs, I had a number of concerns with this production. Although small in scale it was large in ambition and my first toe in the West End water.  I only actually got to watch ...
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Commit Financial Theatrical Suicide with Dylan Thomas! Part One.

Posted by Nick Hennegan on Thursday, October 10, 2013,


I love the image above we are using for Under Milk Wood.  It has a wistful quality to it and that is how I feel about some of our writers - especially Dylan Thomas, who was taken from us so tragically early. I also love Wales, and this image kind of sums up my schoolboy holidays in out-of-season seaside towns. This bench has seen a lot, you can just tell.  And it quietly waits for the next joyful - or maybe melancholy - experience. 

But enough wooden bench and more Milk Wood.  He was a smart c...
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Dylan Thomas Returns!

Posted by Simon Plant on Monday, May 13, 2013, In : Nick Hennegan 

Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas

£ 15

Friday 8th November 2013 at 7.30pm

Saturday 9th November, 2013 at 2.30pm

The Wheatsheaf Pub, Rathbone Street, London, W1T 1JB

 

A rare, fund-raising performance of the "play for voices' given on the very day Dylan died sixty years ago.

The Maverick Theatre Company and the Literary Pub Crawl Company present this stunning vocal masterpiece in the same pub where Dylan Thomas drank and met his wife, Caitlan.

 

A unique, not-to-be-missed event celebrating the genius o...


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Class of '13

Posted by Simon Plant on Wednesday, April 17, 2013, In : Nick Hennegan 
If you're coming to see us over the summer, the chances are you might meet one of this talented bunch of actors. If you've already been on the London Literary Pub Crawl, you may recognise the alleyway next to the Newman's Arms, George Orwell's local.

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George Orwell on Writing - in the Newman Arms

Posted by Simon Plant on Monday, April 8, 2013, In : Writers 
One of the pubs we visit on the tour is The Newman Arms. It's a great pub and unusual in that it's one of very few pubs in the area still owned outright by a family, rather than a brewery. I'll go into more detail about the pub in a later post, but I love the place. And it's appeared in some famous films. But perhaps most famously it's where George Orwell used to drink and is widely believed to be the template for the Proles pub in his novel 1984. You can hear some of his description of the p...
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From Soho to a Good Deal.

Posted by Simon Plant on Monday, March 18, 2013, In : Nick Hennegan 


 Quaintish seafront shops. Closed, of course. But it was Sunday.
    This weekend we thought we'd leave the glorious hustle and bustle of Soho and London and celebrate Mickey's 40th Birthday with a trip to the coast. Mickey works on the National Theatre's production of Warhorse at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane, so he's always in town. Annie (who finished The MouseTrap last year, but lives in Sussex) used her legendary planning powers and arranged for the gang to spend the night in Deal ...

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Put your (Christmas) Hands in The Air...

Posted by Simon Plant on Monday, December 17, 2012, In : Nick Hennegan 
The first of our Christmas tours took place on Saturday 15th, and a great time we had too. This was the scene at the end of the tour in our last pub in Soho. The songs were imminently singable and we're gong to make it a regular Saturday evening thing going forward.

 Happy Christmas and we hope to see you in the New Year. Here's to 2013!




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About Us


Nick Hennegan Hello. I'm Nick Hennegan and I started the London Literary Pub Crawl. Most of the blogs on here will be by me. I've always written but my first theatrical success was an adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' (www.HenryVPlay.com) I founded Maverick Theatre in 1994. (www.MaverickTheatreCompany.com) This pub crawl is really more a promenade theatre performance than a tour and I'm running it with a bunch of enthusiastic local actors and writers. I love sharing my passion for the area and the artists. I also present a weekly radio show, 'Literary London' on Resonance 104.4fm - London's Arts Station and a podcast on our site. If you haven't visited us in London yet, I hope you'll come soon. Have a look at my new site, www.BohemianBritain.com. And feel free to leave comments or email me at nick @ LondonLiteraryPubCrawl.com - I reply to them all and I love to hear from you.

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