The Local; A History of the English Pub, Paul Jennings (The History Press, Stroud, first published 2007, paperback edition 2011) 288pp., paperback, £12.99, ISBN 978 0 7524 5939 4

Paul Jennings, who lectures in history at the University of Bradford, traces the evolution that very English institution, the pub, from the coaching inn and the working-class alehouse and the back-street beerhouse to the prosperous tavern and flamboyant gin palace of the nineteenth century and to the modern ‘local' of town and country.  He sets the history in the wider context of social change from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries.  The book is aimed at the general reader but it has some 45 pages of reference notes and a short note on sources generally for the history of the pub and drink, drawing attention to a wide range of primary and secondary sources published in England and North America.

Jennings provides a fascinating history at a time when pubs are closing in large numbers.  He reminds us of George Orwell's definition of the perfect pub as a place where the architecture and the fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian and discusses the new style institutions symbolised by Wetherspoon conversions.  He selected John Henry Hershall's painting in the Museum of London for the cover of the book which also has 22 figures illustrating the exteriors and interiors of drinking places.

This very readable account is the result of twenty years of diligent research and benefits from the sense of quiet humour of the author.  The hardback edition sold out and the paperback edition at such a modest price is bound to be very popular with pub-goers and students of English social history. It is a little gem.