Lamb

In operation for three centuries (it opened around 1720), this Grade II* listed Bloomsbury boozer boasts a glorious Victorian interior, dating back to a time when stars of the stage and music hall were regulars here. Publicity shots of the largely forgotten likes of Lilian Braithwaite and Seymour Hicks form two decorative rows across the walls of a cosy, varnished-wood interior, while the central horseshoe bar is ringed with original etched-glass snob screens, used to shield Victorian gentlemen when liaising with ‘women of dubious distinction’. They would have been wooed by tunes from the polyphon, a 19th-century music machine still standing in the corner.

Slightly more modern lore includes Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, who were regulars at the pub, marrying at the nearby St George the Martyr Church just four months after they met. Hughes lived in shabby digs at 18 Rugby Street around the corner, which is rather more salubrious now than it was in the 1950s.