Pubs are one of England's most enduring social institutions, and have outlived the church and marketplace as the focal points of communities, with London's fringe theatre, alternative comedy and live-music scenes still largely pub-based. At their best, pubs can be as welcoming as their full name, "public house", suggests, offering a fine range of drinks and filling food. At their worst, they're dismal rooms with surly bar staff and rotten snacks. One thing you can be sure of, however, is that most pubs and bars remain smoke-filled places where drinking alcohol is the prime activity.

London's great period of pub building took place in the Victorian era, to which many pubs still pay homage; genuine Victorian interiors, however, are increasingly difficult to find, as indeed are genuinely individual pubs. Chain pubs can now be found all over the capital: branches of All Bar One, Pitcher & Piano and the Slug & Lettuce are the most obvious, as they all share the chain name, whereas J.D. Wetherspoon pubs and the Firkin chain do at least vary theirs.

Pub food , on the whole, is a lunchtime affair, although "gastropubs", which put more effort into their cooking, are increasingly offering meals in the evening, too. The traditional image of London pub food is dire - a pseudo "ploughman's lunch" of bread and cheese, or a murky-looking pie and chips - but the last couple of decades have seen plenty of improvements. You can get a palatable lunchtime meal at many of the pubs we've listed in this section, and at a few of them you're looking at cooking worthy of high restaurant-standard praise.

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Standard pub opening hours are Mon-Sat 11am-11pm, Sun noon-10.30pm. Our listings only specify the exceptions.
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Though pubs may be constantly changing hands (and names), the quickest turnover is in bars , which go in and out of fashion with incredible speed. These are very different places to your average pub, catering to a somewhat cliquey, often youngish crowd, with designer interiors and drinks; they also tend to be more expensive - we've listed a fair few.

England's licensing laws are likely to have changed by the time you read this, as after more than a century of draconian restrictions, the government has finally caved in and liberalized English opening hours. This should allow pubs and bars to stay open way beyond the standard 11pm last orders, so the times listed may well have changed significantly.