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在英国，很多人下班后都是直奔就近的酒吧，在温暖的灯光下把酒言欢，醉醺醺拂去一天的辛劳，然后再心满意足回家。饭后若闲来无事，又会赶往酒吧。许多人搬家找房子，房子的好坏无所谓，倒要仔细打听附近是否有好酒吧。英国人称酒吧为public house，即“公众之家”。然而，随着经济持续低迷，以及啤酒税、禁烟令、高昂的商业提成等原因，酒吧的生存空间逐步萎缩，酒吧文化岌岌可危。 The church can go, long since the absence of worship; the local shop can go, since the distant supermarket’s cheapness is worth the petrol; but the vanishing of a pub means the loss of the beating heart of a community, in town or countryside.[1] A pub can become a sort of encapsulation of place, containing some small grainy photographs, some dog-eared posters for last year’s celebrations, its snoozing cats, its prettiest girls behind the bar and its strangest characters in front of it.[2] History before the 20th century is scarcely taught in Britain now, but pubs are meant to preserve it. They hold ghosts, myths, the memory of kings. Their loss is also the disappearance of a kitchen, or a sitting room, or some comfortable dim place where there is warmth and a welcome, where a man exchanged his own hearth for another.[3] He was not, however, alone there. In the pub he met his fellow men and, with them, formed a society of musers[4] and drinkers. He mingled with people he might not otherwise meet, had words with them, was obliged to take stock of their opinions.[5] In a highly stratified[6] society of worker, merchant and lord, the pub was open to everyone. | 
