“The warmth of the little pubs and their no-delay service stand in pleasant contrast to the waiting, formality, boredom, and frustration evoked by city offices, museums, churches, concert halls, airline terminals, and retail stores. Not far from the likes of these may usually be found a pub into which one, given the least interlude of freedom, may ‘bolt’ and therein soothe the irritations of urban chafing with an interval of pure felicity.”
Ray Oldenburg on The English Pub’, in The Great Good Place, 1989, repr. 1997.