The Fitzroy Tavern

The pub that named a neighbourhood. Judah “Pop” Kleinfeld, a Polish-Jewish ex-tailor from Savile Row, took over in 1919 and turned it into the centre of London's bohemian scene — so much so that the journalist Tom Driberg coined the term “Fitzrovia” after it in the 1940s. Orwell was a regular while writing Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Dylan Thomas arrived in 1933 and kept coming back, scribbling verses on beer mats and handing them to women at the bar. Augustus John called it “the Clapham Junction of the world.” The Writers and Artists Bar downstairs still has portraits of the old regulars on the walls. Start here — it sets the tone for everything that follows.