The Eagle and Child

The most famous literary pub in England — and currently shut, so it is a doorway to stand outside rather than a pint to drink.

There has been a pub on this St Giles site since 1650, though the name is first recorded in 1684. It belonged to University College from the sixteenth century and later to St John’s. Its fame rests on the back room. From the 1930s until 1962 the Inklings met in the Rabbit Room — C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and others — reading work in progress aloud to one another. It was here in June 1950 that Lewis handed round the proofs of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When the pub was modernised in 1962 the group moved across St Giles to the Lamb & Flag. Be warned before you plan around it: the Eagle and Child has been closed since March 2020. The Ellison Institute of Technology bought it from St John’s College in 2023 and it is being restored, so for now it is a plaque and a frontage rather than a pub.