The Last Landlady: An English Memoir

by Laura Thompson

Laura Thompson’s grandmother Violet was one of the great landladies. Born in a London pub, she became the first woman to be given a publican’s license in her own name and, just as pubs defined her life, she seemed to embody their essence.

Laura spent part of her childhood in her grandmother's Home Counties establishment, mesmerised by the landlady's gift for creating the mix of the everyday and the theatrical that defined the pub’s atmosphere, making it a unique reflection of the national character. Her memories of this time are just as intoxicating: beer and ash on the carpets in the morning, the deepening rhythms of mirth at night, the magical brightness of glass behind the bar…

Through them she traces the story of the English pub, asking why it has occupied such a treasured position in our culture. But even Violet, as she grew older, recognised that places like hers were a dying breed, and Laura also considers the precarious future they face. Part memoir, part social history, part elegy, this book pays tribute to an extraordinary woman and the world she epitomized.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 6, 2018

About the author

Please note: Laura Thompson's account is mistakenly merged with another author's account by the same name. Goodreads Librarians are working to solve the issue.

Laura Thompson writes about life - and is unapologetic in what she captures. She is a sexual assault survivor, has navigated near death traumas with her daughters' medical issues, and possesses the ability to capture what is true, honest, and worthy.

True to form, her writing will resonate powerfully with other survivors and with anyone who knows a survivor - because she embodies the word.

Thompson has worked in nonprofit administration for seven years. She and her husband, Edward, have three children: identical twin daughters, Jane and Claire, and son, Stephen. They reside in the Lowcountry of Charleston, SC.

Reviews

[Rachel Bridgeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Huge thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for the blog tour invite and Unbound for my paperback review copy of ‘The Last Landlady’ by Laura Thompson which is out now.

The grandmother of the author comes to life in this memoir of a woman who was the first to hold a publican licence in the UK.

As Laura says-

”She described a dull-lit,part-colored world of dishevelment and discomfort,of ashy grates and a single rusting tap,of cold rotting wood in an outside privy,a world deprived not just of the ease that was her physical milieu but of the basic post-war amemenities.”

Violet ran the pub she was given by the breweries, from the 1950’s through to I think the early 2000’s (the dating is unclear but it is obviously decades that she ruled the roost with an indominatable presence). The way that she is described by the granddaughter who spent so much time with her is painstaking, and lengthy, as Violet is as much the heart of the book as the pub that she ran. It takes 6 pages ,right at the start to detail how she sits at the bar and holds court.

”My grandmother was free in a way that I am not,just as she was constrained as I am not. She was self-absorbed,right enough,but in another way she never gave herself a thought. Imagine that, today.She simply lived ,covered the expanse of her life without heed or hesitation.”

This book is clearly a labour of love to a beloved relative who not only ran her own business, she also lived on her own terms. Witnessed through the eyes of a child through to being a grownup, we see not just how the pub itself developed , but also the social history of the English pub through its glory days as a community hub, through to multi million pound commerical enterprises with identi-kit chains popping up all over the place.

Through Violet’s tale, Laura Thompson used the local pub as a barometer of change and trend. There are lovely vignettes such as the original bar snack of a wedge of cheese with sliced onions laid out for regulars, swiftly whipped away should a non regular take more than their share, and also after Budget Day mutters of ‘I cannot afford to do this any longer.’

The link between personality of the landlady and the attendance in the pub, is gleefully covered, as the memoir is firmly based within this setting,yet the focus is on those who drift in and out of the doors,

I found this an interesting read, at 250 pages it felt a much longer book because it was divided into parts, and not chapters. This made it difficult to find a stopping place, and the intense first person retelling of Violet’s life did, at times, feel tiring to read. It was like one person talking at you for a very long time,and I enjoyed it, but was quite glad to get to the end.

”The landlady-by which I mean the figure delineated in popular culture-exhibits a knowing, winking exaggeration of ‘female traits’. She wears the equivalent of a uniform,designed to signal either good-natured availability(tught,tinselly) or matronly competence (brisk,bosomy).”

An interesting discourse on the role of women in the public eye which is reflected in the personal memories of Laura’s youth, is framed using the pub as a base for social history. As an English institutution, the link between landlady/lord and the success of a pub is now more concerned with the ability to manage, rather than relying on the personality of the licencee. It is a reminisence of years gone by, sad, mournful but not regretful, joyous in the sharing of moments such as celebrations by the local community.

[Bettie]

Last chance saloon : The ‘casual profundity’ of a proper pub

"It's like we elected the guy at the end of the bar to be president, and now we're all stuck in the bar with him."
— Chris Hayes on President Trump's comments to the press

[Sylvie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like memoirs, but that is not the reason why I picked up this book. I saw it mentioned in an article about books that make you laugh, and I thought I would test some of them. I tried one candidate fot the PG Wodehouse prize - what a mistake. Why is it so difficult to write funny books? This book is entertaining, though I cannot say I laughed

Laura Thompson spent many a happy childhood hour in the pub run by a grandmother she adored. It is a labour of love for her to recreate the personality of her grandmother and to relive those ephemeral times in the old style pub with its special atmosphere. She does so in a style that carries the reader along, with its nuances and reflections, and the occasional asides from the earthy Londoner landlady. Violet came from a long line of publicans. When her father died, Violet was refused a licence – she was merely the daughter, never mind that the pub was in her blood and that she had served and helped there since her teens. She lost shelter and a means of livelihood. Undaunted, she moved to the Home Counties, where she was granted the licence for a so-called pub.

She struggled at first; there were no facilities, no bar, just a shelf to lean on and a shelf behind for bottles. It was a broken down stable, apparently semi furnished by Barry Bucknell the celebrity DIYer. The name became a byword for the worst “decorative touches" one can imagine - his speciality was to hammer plywood on every available period feature. Even the old beams were covered in wall paper. It sounds horrendous. She managed to get the brewing company to refurbish the pub, put in a settle and a proper bar. The pub became her stage, and her life. She relished her role of presiding over the local people, of providing what they wanted, in a cosy, familiar, unthreatening place. The young Laura stored all her memories, offering them as the impressions of a child, peppered with her own mature observations.

Everything about her grandmothe is luxurious, bright, in contrast to the dimmed colours of today. Only lush words will do. She still went to London for the important task of having her hair done:

She was Harrods in the days when one walked in sumptious silence on green patterned carpet, Selfridges in the days when one lunched in the stately high ceilinged Orchard restaurant, she was life in the days when it was lived; the world to which she belonged was already passing, but with what admirable assurance she put the new one in its place.

It'wonderful, with all its implications . Here she is, again,the flamboyant beauty, the down to earth Londoner:

She was a mass of apparent contradictions, but the strength of her personality always resolved the, As a child, I didn’t literally know, but I guessed she was dealing in ambiguities and I trusted her to pull it off. I was mesmerised by her, really. Children are attracted to certainty, and she possessed that quality more than anybody I have ever met. One day she and Irene were in the kitchen examning a photo of a taut-faced Marlene Dietrich in the paper. Had a good lift, she has, Irene said. Be nice to have that done, eh Vi? My grandmother never responded to cattiness. Never thought there was much wrong with my kisser, she said blithely.

How fortunate she was to lack introspection,

An era is invoked, through her and the pub. There was no place for false modesty. In the idiom of today, she spent money on herself, because I’m worth it.:

She had a mink, as people did, into whose capacious pockets she would occasionally stuff her brassiere on evenings out, having removed it in the Ladies’ when she grew bored with wearing it. She had her hair done in Knightsbridge by Mr. Teasy Weasy Raymond; she owned clothes by Dior and Balmain; she took the first and seveal holidays in her beloved south of France, where she drank Campari in the Negresco’s ruinous bar. The mystery is that none of this ever seemed incongruous in her little pub. She, and it, met halfway, achieving not compromise, but something larger and better.

We all think we know what an old pub looks like and feels – yes, they still exist. Laura Thompson paints it in ways we know and feel to be true but never articulated. The pub itself is more than a physical presence – it becomes a place of psychological nuances.

Did those farmers who came to the pub have any idea that in their half realized remarks and silences they were practising "mindfulness"?

In so far as it is possible, a proper pub is where one lives in the present tense. Today, all to often, there is no present tense living except in the act of recording it.

I like her observations on time.

Time, too, was different from elsewhere. The subliminal desire for things to be over, which afflicts too much of life, was turned on its head. In rgw oybv, people sangted time to go on for ever. They wanted it to be held, exquisitely suspended...

The second and third parts of the book could have done with serious editing. They suffer from too many repetitions. Where the repetitions in the first part were entertaining, these essays about the pub are unduly lengthy. They deal with present day pubs, their uncertain future, and all their manifestations as places where people gather to socialize, drink and eat; and all the permutations. It is as if the author needed to justify a memoir glorifying her grandmother with a background of history and “serious” content.

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this book, the author recounts her childhood memories in the public house owned by her grandmother, Violet. It describes Violet’s fight to own the pub, in a time when being a landlady was not considered to be an appropriate livelihood for women, and the ways in which she built the place up from being a down-at-heel country inn to a thriving and popular establishment, despite the odds. The author describes the customers who frequented the pub and the theatrical atmosphere of the pub (where she – being a child – was more often ‘backstage’).

If I’m being honest, after the first fifty pages I skim-read this book as it does not have the same quality of narrative as the other books that I have read in my box. The sporadic dialogue which the author includes almost brings the book into novel territory, and – rather unfortunately – there are no photographs of Violet nor her pub, which I believe would have enhanced the text.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

What’s your tipple dear reader? Care to wet your whistle on a pint of deliciously elegant writing that transports you to the very heart of an English pub? A time before the smoking ban and the thick fog was a welcomed regular while the likes of Peggy Lee sang you into a happy drunken sleep. A place that was often considered a second home, a family. Pull up a stool and get this down ya while I tell you a tale about this charming little pub I know. Bottoms up.

I always enjoy reading a memoir. There’s something hypnotic that swirls you into another world, slowly pulling back the curtain on life’s façade.

Thompson beautifully writes her experience of watching the magic her grandmother Violet creates, the air of elegance that follows the beloved landlady throughout the pages is bewitching. It’s an immersive experience. You can taste the strong gin and hear the chatter of the locals. Simply gorgeous to read.

I learned a lot from this book about the ins and outs of pub life. I discovered how being a landlady was an art form and no one showcased it better than Violet. Thompson writes her with such respect and admiration. Vi sounded like an extraordinary lady. A rare breed that if you are lucky, you only come across once in a lifetime. The pub was her theatre and she respected it, wearing red lipstick with a cigarette in hand, she was always the shining star.

Not only do we get to peek inside Thompson’s memories of pub life but we are also taken on a tour of the social history of pubs. For example their presence in the Dickensian era, how novelists, playwrights and poets used pubs in their work. It’s fascinating to read as I also discovered insider pub knowledge that you would only pick up from experience. Little facts that made you feel more involved and a part of the pub legacy.

It is truly a depressing sight every time I see an abandoned pub on a corner or one being used as a Tescos. They carry such history within their walls and endless stories of wild night lock-ins. It was the pub that made the memories, not the drink. They made life worth living and Thompson shows this effectively in her writing with stories she overheard as a child or witnessed firsthand. She engages your senses as you keep asking the barmaid to stick another half in your glass. It may sound strange to say it dear reader but I felt a sense of calm. That this was a cosy, warm, loving place that made you feel welcomed with good people and endless banter. It was a place you wanted to be.

I admire Vi, she had to fight for her right to ownership of a pub. No one really fights anymore, society has gotten lazy and we hold out our hands expecting everything for free. In days past if you wanted something, you had to go out and fight tooth and nail for your dreams. Violet transformed a building that was falling apart and long forgotten into a thriving business. A place where people felt that warm glow that one often feels when they fall in love. Thompson captures this enchanting past world with such passion and truth. You feel intoxicated and smile aimlessly as her words remind you how the simple pleasures in life are what makes it worth living.

I give The Last Landlady By Laura Thompson a Four out of Five paw rating.

Thompson serves up a mouthwatering memoir that takes you back to a time when pubs beat strong and free at the heart of the community. It leaves your thirst fully quenched and wishing for the days before public houses became a dying breed. Let’s raise a glass to all those that have passed and help create the great legacy that is the English pub. Cheers.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an English Memoir, as it states in the subtitle. No where else could a character like Violet, the last landlady of the book, exist, nowhere else could the pub exist, and nowhere else could Thompson view her youthful memories of “public houses” in such a way. This is the story, though not told in a straight narrative, rather a collection of impressions, of a woman, only truly alive on the stage of her pub, and it is also the story of a now lost institution. The pub as described in this well written memoir cannot really exist in England, or indeed Britain of the twenty first century. That may well be seen as a good thing; the smoking ban has stopped the fug of dangerous fumes from the patrons, the drink drive ban has prevented many, fortunately, testing how far they can push an alcohol tolerance. Many of the pub regulars will probably live longer as a result. Also potential pub goers have changed; they want a drink, but not necessarily of the traditional beer or spirits as before, they want food which is often the main reason for going into the building. This book recalls the atmosphere, the air of a stage which is controlled by the personality of a redoubtable woman, the feeling of being part of a quasi-religious community. The sounds, smells, the tastes of a pub in the middle of the twentieth century is vibrantly reproduced in this book which recalls a beloved grandmother through the perspective of her pub. It also gives a warm portrait of the growth and development of ale houses, taverns, inns and public houses in Britain, not only in numbers but in the reaction to them in the literature of the streets, in the novels of Patrick Hamilton and Graham Greene which aimed to describe the true nature of pub goers. This is an unusual book, warm and regretful of past glories, but also realistic in terms of how life has moved on. I am grateful for the opportunity to read and review this well written book.

The book is divided into three sections; a memoir of a grandmother, one of the first women to get a full licence of a public house in her own right, a section dealing with the differences and developments of inns, taverns and public houses through the centuries with especial concentration on the twentieth century, and an explanation of the decline of the British pub as they are closed and changed beyond recognition. Thompson is a realist; she understands that her grandmother was unique and without her and those who understood the pub trade things would change. She also understands that society has changed, with competition for people’s time and money, with changing demands for family venues with good food. She is saddened by it, and the growth of the chains which offer fixed prices for standard menus.

This is an honest book which looks at an institution which is in the background of so many novels, television programmes and indeed people’s lives. While the “Village Pub” is a necessary construct of fictional British life, this book documents lovingly the reality of how it has changed, with the loss of characters like Violet. It is in some ways a family history, in other ways a social history, but it undoubtedly provides a moving testament to a lost institution.

[The Literary Shed · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was reading Laura Thompson’s beautifully penned The Last Landlady, I was trying to think about why I love memoir and biography so much. What it is about these genres that so enthralls. And when they’re done well, they are enthralling, the writers weaving us into the subjects’ worlds so tightly that we’re there with them, cheering them on at the peaks, and suffering alongside them at the devastating troughs. Essentially, they’re love letters, the result of the authors’ utter fascination, perhaps even obsession, with their subject matter. And Thompson’s book is exactly that, a rather terrific love letter to her grandmother, Violet, one of the great pub landladies, but oh, so much more than that.

From the very first line, we’re aware that Violet is a woman worth celebrating. Always beautifully turned out, her hair styled by the salon at the top of Harrods, her deep red lips and powdered cheeks painted with Estée Lauder cosmetics, her shirt collars ‘impregnated with Alliage scent’, she is a ‘casual empress’, charming the characterful customers who come to spend time in her pub in the Home Counties. Her establishment is a ‘home but not quite home … as dear and familiar to people as home’, but also ‘the place where people escaped from home’. And it is here that Thompson spent much of her childhood, watching Violet stylishly interact with her customers, family and friends – the women of her own ‘rich vintage’, who descended on Sundays to play solo, laugh and reminisce, while drinking and grazing on plates of cheese with ‘certain Sunday embellishments’.

It’s Thompson’s beautiful writing that brings Violet to life, that and her obvious love for her grandmother, and yet the book’s success lies not just in the fact that it’s a finely penned homage to a beloved relative. It’s quite simply social, cultural and women’s history writing at its best, the author evoking an important and lively period of England’s fairly recent past as the backdrop to wonderful Violet. And Violet shines, one of those amazing characters whose antics become part of local folklore, her story becoming ever bigger, brighter, more mesmerising with each new telling.

I love books like this, that must be obvious, but I also think books like this are important at this particular time in our history. They celebrate a particular type of Englishness that’s not based on bombastic nationalistic rhetoric, but rather on an extraordinary individual who made a difference in her own special, rather delicious way.

We’re a nation made of people like this, women and men whose everyday lives and actions have shaped our communities, our way of life, our mores. These are the people we should be talking about now. The pioneers, the trailblazers, the people who forge a path, making our worlds so much better for knowing them. Even if that is via the pages of a rather finely written book.

See: http://www.theliteraryshed.co.uk/read...

This review was originally published as part of the virtual book tour. Thank you to Unbound for sending a review copy. All opinions are our own. All rights reserved.

[Kel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Last Landlady is a memoir written by the Granddaughter of one of the countries first Landladies who was granted her licence back in the 1950s as a divorcee who had grown up in pubs and lost her licence after her father died due to the rules at the time.

This is a fascinating collection of snippets of memories, facts and reflections about the history of pubs through the years and the integral role the landlord/landlady plays in the atmosphere they create.

Laura Thompson recalls her earliest memories on the afternoons/evenings spent in her Grandmothers pub and the feelings connected with these and how certain songs even now can trigger her to be right there on her stool in the back of the pub listening to the chatter through the doors.

I really enjoyed reading this memoir it reflects the relationship between Landlady and her pub and the role that pubs used to play within society. This book envoked memories from when I was a child and the smell of beer that envelopes you as you enter a pub and playing in beer gardens in the summer sun.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first and third part of this book. I really liked the slightly unusual writing style and the author's stories about her grandmother and the pub she ran and her experiences with her grandmother. I also quite enjoyed the third section about the changing nature of pubs. Unlike the author, I kind of think they are good changes (no smoking in pubs, just for a start). But I did find the middle section a bit mystifying - I couldn't quite figure out what it was about. I love the cover!

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author has written a lovely memoir about her grandmother the First Lady land lord.She introduces us th her grandma quite a glamorous woman who lived life to the fullest.We go inside the pub meet all the characters all types who are regulars,Her grandmas best friend who is also her roommate and helps run the pub ,reading about the pub the people their time in history I really enjoyed escaping the reality of today and visiting their lives the pub&her grandmother.Thanks#edelweiss for my advanced copy.

[Rosalind · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do hate abandoning books, but I can’t finish it. I’m just not that into pubs. The writing is quite romantic, and from time to time conveys real feeling as to what a pub is to people, but it’s also hard going in places. I had to re-read some paragraphs multiple times as I just couldn’t concentrate, and the wording was complex. The timeline was all over the place regarding the Landlady as well.

[Jason Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't drink and I've never set foot in England, but I'm obsessed with pubs. I heard an excerpt from this book on the podcast The Moon Under Water and I'm so glad to have read this beautiful look at a life none of us will ever get to see again.

[Christine Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to,like this book as I spent my childhood Summer’s with my cousin at her parents pub and we had such a good time. But…
Ok the first half was fairly interesting but part 2 descended into a school project on pubs. Had to ditch it.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I rather liked it. It captures perfectly the atmosphere that an old pub has to a small child. It really took me back.

[Roo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the first section of the book, but thereafter found the book repetitive and to be honest boring. Three stars only for the first section.

[Kelsey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried very hard to get into this but really struggled through the whole thing.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very beautifully written. The author has the gift of words.

I want to go to an “authentic” pub now.

[James Slaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a brilliantly fantastic book on English pub life in general and the author’s fantastic publican grandmother specifically. Such wonderful history of the pub, written as a poignant memoir.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful in its Englishness. Mine will be a pint!

[Mrs Olga A Danes-Volkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly glorious

I have only recently discovered Laura Thompson and now she is one of my favourite writers.

This memoir of her grandmother, the landlady in question is charming, funny, poignant and beautifully written. Other than having cleaned one for three years, I have never been a pub person but I luxuriated in Ma Thompson's descriptions of her grandmother's pub and her thoughts on what has happened to pubs since. The nearest I can think of is Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie.

I adored this and can thoroughly recommend it. I wish I was able to describe it better

[Lisa Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

LAST ORDERS - THE GOLDEN AGE OF ENGLISH PUBS

Profoundly nostalgic meditation on the English pub in history, literature and actuality. Philosophical, poetic and consistently interesting if a little heavy on the idealisation of the author’s titular grandmother.

[Sarah Carless · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute corker of a book!

I knew this would be a wonderful read as soon as the author mentioned her reverence for the works of Patrick hamilton. Being a long time devotee of the English soybeans you'll recognise every character within. I loved it.

[Dean R Garnham · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not a history book

This isn't a book about pubs. It's a history of one woman and how she melded a pub and it's regulars. Of her personality and style.

When discussing the regulars and the changing face of the pub trade this book shines.

[Kathy Manchester · Rating 2 out of 5]

too much of the same over and over - flat tone

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't get into it. Left it after two chapters.