Wheatsheaf, London

Attractively fronted mock Tudor pub rebuilt by Youngers in 1931 and designed by John T Quilter. There is some beautiful stained glass in the windows including a Younger's sign. Inside is a narrow bar which widens out at the rear, and a restaurant cum function room on the first floor. This is yet another pub said to have been frequented by Dylan Thomas, George Orwell, and the wartime Fitzrovian crowd, many of whom were in, or desperate for, jobs at the nearby BBC. Part of the attraction for them was the stronger and hard-to-find Younger's Scotch Ale here. Dylan Thomas is said to have met his wife Caitlin Macnamara in this pub; they got married at the third attempt having twice spent the licence fee on booze. It was a marriage made in heaven - both were adulterous and drunken but she was physically violent towards him as well. The dilettante Julian Maclaren-Ross was also a regular in the thirties and forties, often with his trademark silver-knobbed cane and teddy-bear overcoat. Court-martialled in 1943, he features as X.Trapnell in Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time series of books. Yet another regular was the bohemian Welsh artist Nina Hamnett, whose fondness for boozing in Fitzrovia's pubs eventually led to a sad and penurious alcoholic decline accompanied by one-night stands with any of the lower end of the clientele willing to buy her a drink. For those interested in more of this pub's literary and artistic history, a fascinating download is on the pub website. The pub is home to the 99 Comedy Club every Saturday night in the top bar. The pub is now part of a small chain with another pub in Brighton.