An Ode to Wetherspoons (Part 1)

Tim Martin's much-maligned pub empire is the closest thing we have to Orwell’s semi-mythical “Moon Under Water”

“The Moon Under Water is my ideal of what a pub should be—at any rate, in the London area. […] But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Moon Under Water.”

-George Orwell (1946)

“In fact, five out of 34 J.D. Wetherspoon free houses in London bear this name and none of these, in the Orwellian mould, has music, “sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks, or plastic panels masquerading as oak”. It is lunacy to suggest the Moon is on the wane.”

-Tim Martin (1991)

Introduction: the cult of Wetherspoons

Opinions differ on Wetherspoons. A lot. Some love it, some hate it.

That’s a statement of the bleeding obvious to anyone who lives in Britain. But to see how extremely non-obvious this is, imagine you had to explain the Wetherspoons phenomenon to an overseas visitor who has never been to one, and who is not familiar with the intricacies of Britain’s multiple overlapping culture wars. You have five minutes. Go.

Not so easy, is it?

For a start, it is not remotely self-evident why anyone would have strong feelings either way about any pub chain. We would never talk about, say, Greene King pubs in this way. Maybe you like Greene King pubs, maybe you don’t, but would you get animated talking about them? If somebody slagged them off, would you feel the need to defend them? If somebody praised them in an exaggerated way, would you feel the need to criticise them?

When it comes to Wetherspoons, the rules are different. I’ll cite a few examples to illustrate that point.

In October 2016, the New Statesman published an article with the title “The cult of Wetherspoons: why does the pub chain inspire such devotion?”, which says:

"Wetherspoons […] is regarded either as a company whose branches are a shadow of what the British boozer once was – the apotheosis of a wider culture of retail uniformity that is turning town centres into identikit high streets with no distinguishing features – or as a national institution that inspires surprising levels of loyalty."

“Cult”, “devotion”, “national institution”, “loyalty”: these are strong words.

Similarly, in an article entitled “How Britain fell for Wetherspoon’s” (August 2017), the Guardian also talked about what they saw as the pub chain’s “cult appeal” . In a disarmingly self-aware way, the author, Ed Cumming, explains:

“[A]s far as I can see, the only people who don’t love Wetherspoon’s are people like me. Review-reading, Michelin-munching […] middle-class bores […] who are as anxious about what their meal says about them as how it tastes and how much it costs. [...]

But we are in a minority. Wetherspoon’s is winning.”

Also writing for the Guardian (April 2018), the comedian David Mitchell explains why he is conflicted on Wetherspoons. On the one hand, Mitchell says:

"I don’t like Wetherspoon pubs – I think they bring the ambience of an airport right into the centre of town.”

But he also sees them as a bit of a guilty pleasure, the sort of thing he knows someone of his social standing isn’t supposed to enjoy, but kind of does, a little:

“Yet within the firm’s dark heart of inauthenticity, there glimmers the light of something real: it’s genuinely a bit rightwing. [...] I don’t mean […] corporate right-leaning […] – this isn’t about corporation tax rates or the trading environment. I mean Little Englander rightwing, irritable old man rightwing, “it’s political correctness gone mad” rightwing, proper pub rightwing.”

One can see why this would appeal to someone who writes for the Guardian, even though he self-evidently doesn’t share those views himself. If you normally move in circles where there’s intense social peer pressure to hold the correct, Guardian-approved opinions, going to a place where people unashamedly express low-status opinions must feel profoundly liberating. I wonder whether Guardian readers sometimes secretly sneak into a Wetherspoons just to get away from other Guardian readers for a while. Maybe they even allow themselves the occasional cheeky problematic opinion there.

In November 2024, CNN tried to explain the concept of “this huge, and hugely divisive, pub chain” to an American audience, under the headline “The cult of the ‘Spoons’: Inside the spartan, cavernous pubs that divide Britain”. (“Cult” – there’s that word again.) According to CNN,

“Wetherspoon pubs are an institution in the UK. They enjoy cult-like status […] among admirers […]

[D]etractors […] see them as emblematic of everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. […]

Some Brits happily settle in for a Wetherspoons pint multiple times a week. Others actively cross the street to avoid one.”

At Royal Holloway University’s Department of Social and Cultural Geography, Dr Jonathan Moses has written a whole PhD thesis on The Politics of the British Public House, 1979 – Present: Architecture, Authenticity and Everyday Enchantment. Inevitably, his thesis also addresses the Wetherspoons phenomenon:

“The company is variously accused of being: a soulless imitation of the traditional pub; a redoubt of alcoholics and lairy ‘pub-circuit’ drinkers; a parasite preying upon cash-strapped municipal councils; a purveyor of zero-hour, unskilled and alienated labour conditions; a vessel for the homogenisation and standardisation of the high street; and a propagandist for right-wing […] policies […]. Yet the chain remains popular, even loved.”

In this multi-part article series, I am going to argue that the members of the Wetherspoons cult are completely right, and that its detractors are completely wrong. My argument is not that the truth is “somewhere in between”, or that “both sides have a point”, or that the issue is “complex” and requires “nuance”. I agree with Prof Kieran Healy from Duke University, who made an important point in the journal Sociological Theory, namely: “Fuck Nuance”.

Writing in that spirit, I am going to argue that Wetherspoons is a reasonably good modern-day real-world approximation of the Platonic ideal of a pub. A degree of cultishness around it is therefore justified, and deserved.

“…it would seem natural to put the beer first…”

What makes a great pub great? This is, admittedly, a somewhat subjective question. Opinions differ. But not all opinions are equally valid. Mine is obviously more valid than yours, and George Orwell’s is, for the time being, more valid than mine.

So let’s start with Orwell’s description of the Platonic ideal of a pub, “The Moon Under Water” (1946). Orwell says:

“If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first…”

Well, quite.

Orwell did not say much about what beers they serve in The Moon Under Water. Being a bit of a weirdo, he cared much more about the drinking vessels than about what’s in them. He only said:

“The special pleasure of this lunch is that you can have draught stout with it. I doubt whether as many as 10 per cent of London pubs serve draught stout, but the Moon Under Water is one of them. It is a soft, creamy sort of stout”.

That would be a Guinness. You can certainly have that in a Wetherspoons. But you can also have a lot more. Wetherspoons is a star performer when it comes to the beer selection, and even if I didn’t like the pubs themselves, I would go there for that reason alone. There are 251 Wetherspoons pubs in the current edition of the Campaign for Real Ale’s Good Beer Guide, up from 236 in the year before. That’s almost a third of them, and bear in mind that the Good Beer Guide is a relative rating. If the number of pubs with great beer doubles, the Good Beer Guide is not going to double in length. In my experience, the proportion of Wetherspoons pubs with good beer selections is far higher than that. The best ones are great, and the worst ones are still OK. You would have to be unlucky to go below that.

That is why I don’t accept the idea that the only good thing about Wetherspoons is the fact that it’s cheap. Wetherspoons is not the Poundland of the pub world. To see why, just imagine Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are in town. They want to go on a little pub crawl, and they are asking you for a list of pubs with great beer. Unless you are in an unusual part of the country – that list is very likely to include a Wetherspoons. There is a place for them even in this money-no-object scenario.

It is, of course, possible to find places with a better beer selection than Wetherspoons. If you could rank all of the country’s pubs by the quality of their beer selection, Wetherspoons would not be in the absolute top percentile. But then, the top percentile would consist almost exclusively of hyper-specialised craft beer pubs and tap rooms, where the entire brand identity is centred on the beer selection. What is remarkable is not the fact that Wetherspoons cannot quite match that, but the fact that they effortlessly come so close. They are the pub world’s equivalent of Yusuf Dikeç, the Turkish sport shooter whose casual, low-effort style made him a meme during the 2024 Summer Olympics: while his competitors were using tailormade high-tech equipment, Dikeç looked as if he had just walked out of a Wetherspoons. Dikeç did not win the gold medal. But is he not, in a sense, the real winner?

Wetherspoons’ emphasis on good beer is not new. It is part of the company’s DNA, which has been there since the early days. Let’s define “the early days” as the period from 1979, when the first-ever Wetherspoons pub was opened in Muswell Hill, North London, to 1992 or 1993. 1992 is the year when they crossed the 50-pubs threshold, and 1993 is the year when they first ventured outside of London.

Keith Flett, a historian who runs a blog about “beards, beer & socialism”, has written an article called “The first Wetherspoons (Marlers bar): a research note”, in which he reminisces:

“I used to drink in Marlers bar with friends and with my late father at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. […] What of the beer in Marlers? My memory suggests that it was from regional brewers like Wadworths, Greene King and Ruddles that were then hardly available in London. […] Unexciting as the range of beer in Marlers bar in the late 1970s might seem to us now, the best part of 40 years ago it would have been very easily the best real ale and hence the best beer range in Haringey”.

In November 1982, the CAMRA magazine London Drinker featured its first-ever ad for Wetherspoons, although that name does not appear yet. Instead, it lists three individual pubs, one called “Martin’s Free House” (the very first one, which Flet still refers to as “Marler’s Bar” above), one called “Dick’s Bar”, and one called “J.J. Moon’s”, an allusion to “The Moon Under Water”. They served “traditional ales from Adnams, Arkells, Belhaven, Godsons, Greene King, Shepherd Neame, Timothy Taylor, Tisbury, Wadworths and many others”.

A year later, one of those three, Dick’s Bar, became the first Wetherspoons pub to make the final cut for the Good Beer Guide.

Dr Jonathan Moses also covers this aspect of the Wetherspoons origin story in his aforementioned PhD dissertation:

“Paradoxically for an emerging leviathan, it was in attending to a shift in the sensibility of consumers - away from modernised mass production brewing and towards a product (real ale) expressive of the local and particular - that the company, in part, built its success.”

And so it continues. I have done my usual little search of the online news archives, where I have found Wetherspoons recruitment ads placed in The Advertiser and various other publications in June 1989. Back then, Wetherspoons described itself – very much in a Moon-Under-Water spirit – as a group of “[t]raditional Style English pubs with a strong emphasis on real ale, with no juke boxes or pool tables”.

In November 1989, Wetherspoons wanted to open a new pub in Harrow, Northwest London, where they ran into the most powerful force in British politics: NIMBYism. In an article entitled “Furore over pub proposal”, the Harrow Observer, alongside various other local papers, reported:

“Householders are furious about plans to open a new pub […] fearing increased disturbance from revellers. The Finchley-based JD Wetherspoon organisation applied […] for a licence to convert the former Dorson Bakeries […] to a free house called The Moon Under Water.”

Tim Martin, the company’s founder and chairman, responded:

“The protests are a mere knee-jerk reaction. [The Moon Under Water] is intended to be a real-ale bar without music. It will be a quiet freehouse.”

The positioning as a “real-ale bar” suggests, again, a focus on beer quality, especially given the backdrop: this is the late 80s, the days of the lager louts and loutish lagers. This time, the name of the pub is no longer just an allusion to The Moon Under Water; it is literally The Moon Under Water. This would soon become a running theme, which it is to this day. I had a quick look at the Wetherspoons app: at the time of writing, they have 13 pubs called “The Moon Under Water”, five that are called “J.J. Moon’s”, and another 16 with “moon” in their name, including one “The Moon and the Spoon”. This does not, of course, mean that they are trying to build the exact pub that Orwell had in mind, but they clearly see themselves in that tradition.

In January 1990, we find another Wetherspoons recruitment ad, this time in the Evening Standard, which says:

“JD Wetherspoon Ltd., which has been established for ten years, now operates London’s largest independent freehouse company. We have prospered by opening old-fashioned, traditional ale freehouses without music, in opposition to the major breweries.”

That description sounds, again, very Orwellian, not in the sense of “dystopian”, but in the sense of “classic, characterful pubs”. The phrase “opposition to the major breweries” would no longer make sense today: why would a pub define itself “in opposition” to breweries? But this was a time when the British beer market was dominated by six large brewing companies – “The Big Six” – that also ran their own pub empires. Most people evidently liked those beers, but CAMRA-type beer aficionados did not, and the ad must clearly have been a nod to them.

In 1990, Wetherspoons also hosted its first little real-ale festival, albeit only with six beers.

The focus on a good selection of real ales was accompanied by a focus on low prices. In November 1990, the Evening Standard reported a shocking finding: “Price of London pint can vary by over £1”:

“In the smoking room bar of Simpson’s at the Strand, seated at mahogany tables on red leather Chesterfield armchairs, a pint of draught Bass costs £2. […]

[I]n West Hendon in a little pub called The White Lion of Mortimer, bartenders were quietly serving beer for 92p a pint.

The White Lion is part of a chain of traditional free houses owned by a company called J D Wetherspoon, which believes that real ale does not have to cost the earth.

Even in its pubs closer to the centre of London, it offers a pint of Younger’s Scotch ale at 99p and serves Greene King IPA at £1.10, Theakston’s XB and Eldridge Royal Oak at £1.28 – knocking pence off its competitors’ rates.”

I looked up Simpson’s In The Strand on Google Maps: they are still going (if temporarily closed at the time of writing). The latest information on beer prices is from 2018, when a Simpson’s Dinner Ale went for £7. I’d be surprised if it was less than £10 today.

I’ve also had a look at the White Lion, which is no longer a Wetherspoons pub, so I’ve picked the White Swan in Islington as the nearest substitute. There, you can still get Greene King IPA for £1.99 (!). That’s not the one I would have picked, but my preferred choices (Mad Squirrel Big Sea – £5.71; Portobello Notting Helles – £5.20; Shipyard APA – £4.74) would not bankrupt you either.

In December 1990, in an ad in The Informer, Wetherspoons described its pubs in a way which, to me, still sums them up perfectly, namely as

“independent free houses […] renowned […] for their superb traditional ales and […] for unique décor and atmosphere. […] [W]e are able to offer a constantly changing choice of real ales from England’s regional breweries. […]

[Y]ou’re free to quaff your pints in a relaxing atmosphere […] and at prices you’ll find very hard to beat anywhere in the capital.”

A month later, the Pinner Observer reported:

“Drinkers were this week toasting the cheapest pint in town. One of Harrow’s newest pubs, JJ Moons, […] is offering thirsty customers a pint of bitter at 79p. The 29 pubs in the Wetherspoons free house group are providing what they believe is the cheapest pint locally.

Wetherspoon managing director Tim Martin said: “I am certain that we now have the cheapest pint of bitter at any London pub and probably in England.””

Wetherspoons organised another beer festival in April 1991, this time on a slightly larger scale. The Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush Gazette reported:

“Beer connoisseurs will be able to sample 17 varieties from all over the country […]

The Moon On The Green pub […] is taking part in the Great Wetherspoon Beer Festival which is currently touring London pubs. […]

The pub’s manager Barry Dolan said: “The festival will give customers a chance to try some of the more unusual beers of England without having to leave the area.”

A month later, the Independent published a pearl-clutching article, taking issue with the fact that a politician, John Cope, had said something positive about British pubs.

“The relaxation of licensing hours and the fact that some public houses now serve coffee of a sort has done next to nothing to civilise these noisy, hard-drinking places. […] Yet still the myth of the great British pub persists. If his utterances are any guide, John Cope MP, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party […] appears to believe that The Moon Under Water really exists”.

Tim Martin replied with a letter to the editor, pointing out that of course The Moon Under Water exists:

“Sir: Today’s leading article “The mythical British pub” […] waxes eloquent in condemning […] John Cope for appearing to believe that George Orwell’s perfect pub, the Moon under Water, exists in reality.

In fact, five out of 34 J.D. Wetherspoon free houses in London bear this name and none of these, in the Orwellian mould, has music, “sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks, or plastic panels masquerading as oak”. It is lunacy to suggest the Moon is on the wane.”

That was the early Wetherspoons, which had fewer than 50 pubs, all of them in London. How similar they were to today’s Wetherspoons pubs, I have no idea. But two themes already stand out: a focus on beer quality, and an Orwellian (in a good way, strange as that may sound) feel.

From then on, they grew at an almost exponential rate, doubling the number of pubs every two to three years, scaling up that model across the country. In 1992, they opened their 50^th pub, which – you guessed it – was called “J.J. Moon’s”. in 1994, they crossed the symbolic 100-pubs threshold, and yes, of course pub number 100 was called “The Moon Under Water”. In 1997, pub number 200 (“The Regal Moon”) opened its doors, and in 2000, there were 400 of them. The next doubling would take until 2011, when the Wetherspoons empire reached roughly its present-day size.

Or let’s look at it geographically. In 1992, Wetherspoons was still a London-only operation. In 1993, they reached East Anglia; in 1994, the Midlands; in 1995, Manchester; in 1996, Scotland and Wales, and in 2000, Northern Ireland.

I can’t remember when I first set foot into a Wetherspoons, but it was probably The Windmill at Stansted Airport in 2007. (There still is a Wetherspoons pub called The Windmill at Stansted, but it is in a different part of the airport, and it looks completely different, which raises the philosophical question of whether it is really the same pub.) It took me a few years to figure out that “Wetherspoons” was a chain, and even when I had, I did not really think of them as such. There were some individual Wetherspoons pubs that I liked, especially The Shakespeare’s Head near Holborn (I studied and worked at King’s College), but I did not have a well-developed concept of what “a Wetherspoons” was.

I only joined the cult in 2013, and it was beer snobbery that led me into it. We had just moved to a different part of London, where I was underwhelmed by the beer selection in the pubs, and I started to see Wetherspoons as an oasis in that regard. I can’t remember how exactly I made the leap from thinking of them as individual pubs to thinking of them as parts of the same family, but it was probably because at that time, I also started reading their in-house magazine Wetherspoons News.

I suppose this is how nation states emerge. In 1800, there is no way a Bavarian, a Prussian, a Rhinelander and a Saxon would have thought of each other as compatriots. Common reference points, such as supraregional publications, then changed that. Imagine you are a 19^th century Prussian reading about a beer festival in Cologne. You have never been there, you have no plans of going there, and you might never go there. If you did, you would probably have difficulties understanding the local dialect, and you might not even like this “Kölsch” stuff. But you nonetheless start to think that in a way, these are your people too, and their traditions are also, in a way, yours.

Wetherspoons News fulfils the same role for citizens of the Wetherspoons Empire. You are sitting in a Wetherspoons, reading in Wetherspoons News about how some distant Wetherspoons has won some award, or hosted some event with a local brewer. You have never been there, you have no plans of going there, and you might never go there. But you still feel a vague connection. You know that if you washed up there somehow, you would feel at home. And you would almost certainly find some great beer there.

To be continued…