Review at a glance: ★★★★☆
Gastropub? Forget it. Fitzrovia’s Newman Arms is decidedly, gloriously, a proper pub. Not a boozer — there are no watery-eyed old men, no ancient Axminster — but certainly not a restaurant. It’s been just about everything else in its time, though: from 1730, a tallow chandler, an ironmonger, a picture framer. A brothel, once, too. All that stopped in 1860 — though a cheeky shag in the loos may have happened since — when it became an inn that Dylan Thomas and George Orwell later drank in. The history isn’t much played on, though a tribute to an old landlord is still there: “Joe Jenkins, ex-proprietor, poet, bon viveur and Old Git, regularly swore at everybody on these premises.”
