The Moon Under Water

This article is about the George Orwell essay. For the Ryan Cabrera album, see The Moon Under Water (album). For the Manchester public house, see The Moon Under Water (public house).

"The Moon Under Water" is a 1946 essay by George Orwell, originally published in the Evening Standard, in which he provided a detailed description of his ideal public house, the fictitious Moon Under Water.

Summary

Orwell stipulated ten key points that his perfect London pub should have (his criteria for country pubs being different, but unspecified):

1. The architecture and fittings must be uncompromisingly Victorian.
2. Games, such as darts, are only played in the public part of the bar.
3. The pub is quiet enough to talk, with the house possessing neither a radio nor a piano.
4. The barmaids know the customers by name and take an interest in everyone.
5. It sells tobacco and cigarettes, aspirins and stamps, and lets you use the phone.
6. There is a snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and [...] large biscuits with caraway seeds.
7. Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch -- for example, a cut off the joint, two vegetables and boiled jam roll—for about three shillings.
8. [...] a creamy sort of draught stout [...], and it goes better in a pewter pot.
9. They are particular about their drinking vessels at "The Moon Under Water" and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones.
10. [...] You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden.

Orwell admitted that "to be fair", he did know of a few pubs that almost came up to his ideal, including one that had eight of the mentioned qualities.

The essay finished as follows:

And if anyone knows of a pub that has draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio, I should be glad to hear of it, even though its name were something as prosaic as the Red Lion or the Railway Arms.

See also

• George Orwell bibliography
• Pub names

External links

• Link including full text and scans of the original newspaper article