The Grapes
Pubs in Londen, 76 Narrow Street
The Grapes in the London district of Limehouse lays claim to the title of the most literary pub in London. Charles Dickens regularly frequented this pub, but there is virtually no mid-nineteenth century pub in London that did not welcome Dickens.
But no pub boasts about it as much as The Grapes. Various versions of his collected works are on display in numerous places, and it teems with paintings of Dickens and illustrations from his books. In case you missed it, The Grapes is mentioned in ‘Our Mutual Friend’.
Dickens described the pub: “A tavern of dropsical appearance… long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. It had outlasted many a sprucer public house, indeed the whole house impended over the water but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver, who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.”
In his short history of the pub, the actor Ian Mckellan quoted this passage from Dickens. He had a good reason to promote the pub. When The Grapes ran into trouble a few years ago, McKellen and a few others bought it.
For decades, McKellen has lived a few houses further up Narrow Street in a house where the painter Francis Bacon previously lived. For some of that time, he shared the house with his then-partner Sam Mathias. When they heard in 2011 that the pub was for sale, they decided to buy it.
According to an article The Evening Standard, it’s not entirely clear how this all came about. According to McKellen, he had ‘happened to hear the year before’ that the pub was for sale. However, Mahias said that McKellen had been discussing the possibility of buying the pub with ‘numerous friends’ for ‘years’. Eventually, Mathias gave in because his current partner would be able to run the pub and live in the apartment above it. “Buying the pub with Ian was a nice way for me to connect the past and present,” says Mathias.
The fact that the article appeared in The Evening Standard is no coincidence. The Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev (who has been transformed into an English Lord) is the owner of the Standard and also a co-owner of the pub. He had met McKellen and Mathias during negotiations to bring their successful rendition of ‘Waiting for Godot’ to Moscow. With an estimated fortune of over two billion pounds—a significant portion of which came from his father Alexander, a former Russian spy in London—spending a few hundred thousand pounds on The Grapes was not a problem.
McKellen’s presence at The Grapes is palpable. Not only is there a statue of him as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, but his wizard’s staff also adorns the pub’s bar. Overall, it is a great pub. From the small terrace, there’s a fantastic view of Canary Wharf and of a beautiful statue by Anthony Gormley in the Thames. That also has a connection with McKellen. More on that next time.
