Pub takes the English public house apart, showing how its separate elements work, and reassessing the pub’s history and cultural significance.

"Erudite, quirky, and amusing." Sebastian Faulks

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

The pub is an English institution. Yet its history has been obscured by myth and nostalgia. In this unique book, Philip Howell takes the public house as an object, or rather as a series of objects: he takes the pub apart and examines its constituent elements, from pub signs to the bar staff to the calling of “time.” But Pub also explores the hidden features of the pub, such as corporate control, cultural acceptance and exclusion, and the role of the pub in communities.